Yiddish: A Nation of Words

by Miriam Weinstein

This first-ever popular history of Yiddish is so full of life that it reads like a biography of the language.

For a thousand years Yiddish was the glue that held a people together. Through the intimacies of daily use, it linked European Jews with their heroic past, their spiritual universe, their increasingly far-flung relations. In it they produced one of the world's most richly human cultures.

Impoverished and disenfranchised in the eyes of the world, Yiddish-speakers created their own alternate reality - wealthy in appreciation of the varieties of human behavior, spendthrift in humor, brilliantly inventive in maintaining and strengthening community. For a people of exile, the language took the place of a nation. The written and spoken word formed the Yiddishland that never came to be. Words were army, university, city-state, territory. They were a people's home.

The tale, which has never before been told, is nothing short of miraculous - the saving of a people through speech. It ranges far beyond Europe, from North America to Israel to the Russian-Chinese border, and from the end of the first millenium to the present day. This book requires no previous knowledge of Yiddish or of Jewish history - just a curious mind and an open heart.

Genres: History, Jewish, Language, Nonfiction, Judaism, Audiobook, Religion

300 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 2001

About the author

Miriam Weinstein writes about family, food, friendship, and community, as well as on Jewish themes. Her books are warm, humorous, and accessible. Her newest book is All Set for Black, Thanks: A New Look At Mourning.
She lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, my father passed away about 18 months ago and I inherited his library of physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks, among other things. The physical books are in boxes for the time being, and number about 2000. The ebooks number over 100,000, and I'm slowly working my way through seven 1TB hard drives, trying to figure out what is in this treasure trove. My dad was a voracious reader of all sorts of things; he was an amateur historian and philosopher, and when he decided to study a subject, he would buy every book he could find on that topic.

My dad was also Jewish, and while he never kept completely to the teachings, it was ingrained into him when he was a little boy and young man. His parents and siblings were immigrants from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s and they spoke Yiddish, a mashup of Hebrew and dozens of other languages. I remember hearing my aunts and uncles speaking it, and trying to figure out what language they were speaking.

This audiobook is the first from my dad's library, and the subject is a perfect fit in finding out a little bit about his side of the family. The book is a history book, history of a little-known language and a history of a people group who have maintained a distinct culture away from their homeland for two thousand years.

The book was fascinating. The narration was perfect, and it felt like I was hearing my dad's relatives once again.

I'm quite excited about what other treasures I'll find in this massive library, too.

[Libyrinths · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. Weinstein writes so engagingly and clearly, what's not to like? Weinstein tells the history of Yiddish and the role it has played in Jewish history, from its origins to today. She includes plenty of defined Yiddish terms, word origins, and lots of Yiddish sayings (in translation) which make the book sparkle. I never knew zeyde (grandfather) had a slavic origin.

There are exultant stories and profiles of the talented Yiddish writers, such as Sholem Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, the Singer brothers -- Isaac Bashevis and his older brother Israel. And there are the heartbreaking stories as well, such as how the newly-formed state of Israel so suppressed the use of Yiddish (and doesn't seem very much more disposed toward it today), as well as the Soviet Union's agenda-driven programs for Yiddish-speaking areas, then its brutal suppression of such, and back and forth. Or how so many new immigrants to America were only too happy to drop all vestiges of the old country, and let Yiddish pass almost into oblivion. Through it all, the feeling of Jewish life, especially of Eastern European life, exudes from the pages.

By the end, you feel a lot of nostalgia for a language which is basically on life-support today, and the richness of expression it provided which is almost lost. She discusses the efforts to collect and preserve the literature of Yiddish, and how Klezmer music drew a new generation of people to rediscover Yiddish, albeit not as a fully spoken language, but more as an academic pursuit. The only current Yiddish speakers are the ultra-orthodox Jews, and they are an isolated and small number of the total Jewish population.

Will Yiddish survive or recover its place in the broader Jewish world? It doesn't look hopeful, but you sure root for its resurgence by the time you finish the book.

Nu? Bubeleh, get the book already.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always been intrigued by Yiddish, and Weinstein's history of the language is a wonderful story of a nation created entirely out of words, so many of which have entered the American idiom. What I found tragic was that Yiddish was nearly wiped out by the Shoah (in Europe) and by assimilation (in the US). If you've ever been curious about Yiddish, this is a great introduction.

[OFER AGAM · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a view of Jewish history through

the Yiddish language. It is captivating and fascinating.. it is suitable for both academic and casual readers. Very well done.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this appeared in 2001, it feels as if it predated the millennium, as if beyond a generation ago. Weinstein writes without false hope and treats soberly the demise of conversational Yiddish. Even the "Yeshivish" dialect mixes Hebrew and "Yinglish" among ultra-Orthodox haredi and hasidim, while the secular variations, as Ross Perlin treats well in Language City (2024, about NYC polyglot cultures; see my review), fade. Weinstein notes only 0.5% of literature from the once-ubiquitous Ashkenazi mother-tongue, originated a thousand-plus years ago along the Rhine, literally, "mamaloshen," has been translated into English. And of course, vast archives were destroyed by both Nazis and Soviets.

She quotes many relevant proverbs, funny, ironic, wry as you'd expect from a speech that may have been poor, tellingly, in descriptions of nature, but rich in emotion. I wanted to understand how a vast vernacular in which my wife's father was raised during the Depression in Seattle could so rapidly been reduced to punchlines which that generation's children couldn't understand (as the case for many postwar families such as my in-laws). And as an adult speaker of Irish, the Yiddish saying that "the grandson learns what the son forgets" rings genealogically and chronologically true in my parallel.

While Chaim Grade earns a quote at the start of one chapter, his estimable work was passed over. It exemplified the need for this overview to have added coverage of writers who have been rendered into English, if only to expose us to worthy books which represent the creative and scholarly range of top Yiddish authors. This could have been a reading list supplemental to her notes and bibliography. As to the latter, it doesn't match within the narrative itself any indication of pages cited or sources used.

The rush to abandon a backward, denigrated, and insular language so as to assimilate hastened the fall of the everyday "lingua franca" among immigrants to Israel and North America. Amidst official prejudice in the USSR, stigma among new host populations, Hebrew-driven rejection by "sabras" of a manner of speaking linked to the maternal, sentimental, and subservient Old Country, plus the harsh practical lack of perceived "value" among nations where the Russian, Sephardic, Mizrahi newcomers followed mid-20c. into the Holy Land, and the millions of refugees into the U.S., all meant Yiddish was discarded by the young, relegated to the old, and consigned at best to aging radicals, a few academics, religious outliers, and quixotic idealists. Taking up a few klezmer tunes or catchphrases won't revive Yiddish in effective ways to sustain continuity, at least outside enclaves of true "belief."

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, fascinating, and appropriately wry love letter (and borderline eulogy) to the mamaloshen.

[Alan Zwiren · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author states upfront that she is neither a journalist nor a historian and I believe that is a good description of the content in this book. Having grown up in a household where Yiddish was present, I too appreciate the significant role that Yiddish has played in the Ashkenazi Jewish history; however, I have some fundamental issues with what the author promotes as Yiddish. She seems to forget that the Yid in Yiddish stands for Jew.

The author attempts to present a distinct Yiddish culture, in fact, the author frequently blurs the lines of language and the Eastern European Jewish culture. And even though she does mention that Yiddish is connected with Europe, especially Eastern European Jews, when talking about Judaism, in which she often makes errors in her presentation, she presents Ashkenazi Judaism as Judaism itself.

The beginning of Yiddish history is very weak before the Hassidic movement and I came away from those chapters knowing very little more about the origins of the language than I knew before reading the book. The author then goes into some Jewish history of Ashkenazi Jews in Europe and especially the Pale, where Russia allowed Jews to settle.

Parts of the book that I did enjoy and were enlightening included the history of Yiddish in Tsarist Russia and the USSR. I did learn and get a better understanding of the Bundist movement, a movement I was not too interested in, and knew little about it previous to this book. And although I did know about the USSR's plans to move Jews to Birobidzhan my knowledge of this piece of history was also minimal. I found these to be the best part of the book.

I was also greatly challenged by the author's portrayal of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the person credited with the revival of Hebrew to become a modern language and the language of Israel. Although the author did not come right out and state it, the attitude I took away from this section demonstrated much animosity. Whether or not you are a Zionist, in building a modern state of Israel which those Chalotzim, pioneers in Hebrew, faced the challenges of bringing Jews from around the world, not all Ashkenazi Yiddish speaking, together. And since time immemorial, the lingua franca, as the author stated in the book, that Jews could always connect to one another was utilizing some form of Biblical Hebrew. So it was only natural that Hebrew became the language of choice to build the new Jewish nation.

The author is concerned that Yiddish is a dying language and perhaps she is right. I have been travelling the world for business for over 35 years. In the beginning, I could get by with my very poor Pidgeon Yiddish, especially with the Chabad Shiluchim I encountered. However, as time progressed, Hebrew became the language of choice even with the Chabad Shuluchim. During my most recent trips to China, I met Chabad Shiluchim that spoke no Yiddish and very little English; mostly Hebrew.

And perhaps Yiddish is not dying. I recently read that the "Harry Potter" series is being translated into Yiddish. So perhaps the rumors of Yiddish's demise are premature.

One feature that I did appreciate about the book is its extensive list of sources. If one does want to learn about a topic, I always feel that people should read the original sources. Books such as "Outwitting History" serves the purpose of introducing the reader to a topic, readers who are truly interested always want to read the sources for where the author got their information. In looking over the list of sources, it is a rich list of books on a wide variety of Jewish topics of which I have had the pleasure of reading a select few. By sharing the list the reader has the opportunity to delve into the topics that interest them the most.

Finally, this book was written in 2001. In it, the author mentions Aaron Lansky's efforts to preserve Yiddish and the books written in the language. In 2004 Aaron Lansky wrote "Outwitting History" about his efforts to preserve Yiddish books and by doing so the Yiddish language. Although the book does not go into a deep background and history of Yiddish, I found the book to be a much better book on Yiddish and his efforts.

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yiddish, a nation of words
Miriam weinstein admits that she is a journalist, not a linguist or a historian; nor does she describe herself, as Anita Norich does, for herself, as a translator.
For me, this book written 21 years ago is a bit too superficial. The overviews of the two books listed below go into much more detail, and perhaps as an introduction to a more full overview, she serves a purpose.

although I quibbled at first with some of her generalizations and what not, when I consider how well she summed up the various facets of what I have been immersing myself in gradually over the past 25 years or so, i think she did a pretty good job;

her summary of the Soviet experience, of the cynicism surrounding Birobidjan, of the experience of mame loshn in Israel, and post war america, and in the Haredi world jive very well with what I have learned elsewhere.

As far as individual parts of this book are concerned:
Historical “birth” date murky but already in 11th century, Rashi (Reb Shlomo ben Itzhoki) was writing some marginal notes in Yiddish (>1000 years ago), …
The Wormser makhzor in 1272 has first written full sentence of Yiddish marginal notes, that is saved into the present times.
…….
Miriam’s chapter on Yiddish In the Soviet Union in its first 20 years resonates well with what I have read elsewhere.. (I have taken several courses on aspects of Soviet Yiddish, and of course, the work of the murdered Soviet Yiddish writers)/

The chapter on Birobidjan was very enlightening about Soviet cynicism; , even though I already heard the lecture about growing up there by Kolya Borodulin, who though born in Biro, now runs the Workers’ Circle’s Yiddish education efforts, reading about the shifting Soviet policies towards Birobidjan reveals a microcosm of both Soviet cynicism and Stalinist and Soviet antisemitism.
………………….
The chapter on the relation of Yiddish to Hebrew in Palestine/Israel is weaker I think than the preceding ones; it does describe the language wars conducted by the Zionists; it was the real war against the Jews conducted by hitler and his friends that allowed the Zionists to win the language wars. Miriam implies that because Hebrew became the national language of Israel, Yiddish was doomed… This turns out to be true, but only because the source places of Yiddish were mostly annihilated by the Nazis from 1939-45, (and subsequently, by out migration of the remnant to either the US where they spoke English, or Israel where they spoke Hebrew.)



The classic pictures in the book are very interesting to me, but some explanatory context might help the reader figure out why they are included, and they might be shown, except for the exigencies of the publsiher, where in the book the significance of the important personages depicted is described.

Some examples of oversweeping generalizations in Miriam’s book:

She writes: “The last two decades of the 19th century saw the deepening of the world crisis that would lead to world war and revolution”, it reads well… but to me is much too superficial an account of a complex 34 year period, with WWI and the Russian Revolutions not at all necessarily preordained. (except perhaps to the Marxists)

She writes of Sholem Aleikhem: “He and his readers ran a race against time. The flowering of Yiddish literature coincided with the scattering of the Yiddish World.” Again, reads well, but Rabinovitch’s race was with the TB germ, and her meaning in “scattering” of the Yiddish world is unclear.. there was emigration and migration (more of the latter than the former during WW1), there was assimilation in the US, but not so much at first in the new Soviet Union, and not that much in the newly independent Poland or Lithuania.

The Holocaust was still a quarter century away.

[Adam Glantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

In telling the story of Yiddish as just that -- a story -- the author has an unenviable task, as we already know how the story ends and it's a sad one. But this doesn't dampen Weinstein's enthusiasm, as she peppers her prose with Yiddish aphorisms, poems, and songs, and gives us compelling biographical sketches of luminaries familiar (Sholem Aleichem) and more obscure (Esther Frumkin). In a nutshell, Yiddish achieved its great centrality in Eastern European Jewish life by substituting for all the institutions a scattered and persecuted people lacked: it defined who was “in” and “out,” and gave the “in” group a sense of comfort in an unfriendly world. Toward the end of its existence as a mass language, it was capable of high art in the hands of such craftsmen as Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. It’s tragic, of course, that the Holocaust, in killing most Yiddish speakers and stigmatizing the language among those who survived, cut Yiddish off at its roots. But almost as tragic, albeit in a different way, is how many post-Enlightenment Jews themselves derided Yiddish as a mere jargon that should be jettisoned in the process of social advancement; Weinstein reveals that even self-conscious Yiddishists often privileged the teaching of the secular vernaculars to their children to help them get ahead. And so the language was allowed to die in a generation or two among diaspora communities such as the one in the United States. (Does this mean the Jews are, culturally, their own worst enemies, or was this all but inevitable for a diasporic community in the modern world?) Meanwhile, the aggressive Hebraism of Zionists like Eliezer Ben Yehuda preempted Yiddish in Israel, an ironic fact given the vital role played by the Hebrew content of Yiddish in helping revive Hebrew as a modern spoken tongue. The experience of Yiddish in the Soviet Union was more complex but ultimately even more unhappy. Repression periodically decimated the ranks of Yiddish-speaking intellectuals, even as the Soviets created a putative Yiddish homeland in isolated Birobidzhan. But Jewish Communists like the Yevsektsiya share some blame, as they abetted the antireligion and antinationalism campaigns that impoverished the content of Soviet Yiddish. Weinstein concludes with the sad but honest appraisal that Yiddish’s great days lay behind it and its value is in its legacy: revivals in academic and musical contexts are a distinctly minority phenomenon, and only the ultra-Orthodox religious fold provides an organically Yiddish-speaking community.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO I love this book have read it a couple of times since 2002 when I got it for Christmas. It has some of my favorite things Yiddish, Language, words and a history about all of that. Miriam Weinstein writes well in an easy flowing manner. This is a really comprehensive work and well researched. If you have read it and liked it too you will likely also really like "Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods" by Michael Wex. That book, I have also read several times.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to learn the origins of the Yiddish language, then read this book. It will inspire you to buy Uriel Weinreich’s Yiddish English dictionary. There is a quote in Yiddish and translated to English of a common saying at the start of each chapter. This is the language that has been the glue that holds the Jewish people together for 1000’s of years.

[Jennifer Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and well written, this book is a capable introduction to the history of Yiddish that once thrived in Europe and was the basis for a vast cultural output. Often derided as a mere dialect, and not a fully-developed language unto itself, Weinstein describes the solidity of the language and the parameters of its influences. She does so by providing an ample cast of characters who intersected with Yiddish as key producers of Yiddish content, as champions of the language, as well as its determined detractors. Often maligned as a mere dialect, Yiddish evolved as a true language while melding with the languages spoken in the non-Jewish nations in which Yiddish thrived, as well as containing resonances of the sacred Hebrew language. How, exactly, both of these influences operate within Yiddish is an important contribution of this book, in that it helps foster an understanding of what exactly Yiddish is. It also describes the complex relationship of Yiddish in the context of the development of Zionism and the establishment of Israel in the mid-20th century, and the accompanying development of modern Hebrew. Weinstein directly addresses the genocide perpetrated against the speakers of Yiddish; how could she not? These passages are most necessary. However, it also situates Yiddish as the vehicle that was used by those murdered millions to live, work, and create. As such, it honors their memory. So too, does the book explore the ways in which Yiddish lives on today; only the Hasidic use it as a daily conversational language, but the book respectfully describes their usage, as well as how it diverges from "formal" Yiddish, which is enjoying a revival by virtue of the efforts of the Yiddish Book Center and renewed interest in Klezmer music. Weinstein recognizes these contemporary usages but explains how also they are a thing apart from the once-thriving international language that developed through expansive common usage.

[Carmen212 · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the 9th-10th century when Yiddish came into being, to today: Hebrew won out as the language of Israel (a language that had to be created from the old Hebrew, words for sink, bus, spoon, banana, blanket and so on). In 1939 there were 11 million Jews in the world, and 8-9 million spoke Yiddish as their 'mama loshen,' mother tongue.

This book moves from century to century and all the iterations of Yiddish. Yiddish and religious Hebrew kept a chain of history and belonging to a people without a nation.

There is so much in this book. How Yiddish became a denigrated and debased language even to those who spoke it. I have a vocabulary of maybe 60-70 words and no grammar. I once met an old Israeli woman on a bus in Jerusalem. Between her Yiddish, my minimal Yiddish and my beginner German we were able to exchange a lot of information. And once at a Prague train station I asked an old couple a question in simple German--the woman asked me 'sind Sie Jude?" I said yes and we both started to cry. Go figure.

[Zhelana · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know why I didn't connect with this book, but I really didn't. I think it might have been something in the author's tone but I can't pinpoint what it was. It just annoyed me. And this sounds like a book I would really like - linguistics and Jewish? Sign me up! And yet I just couldn't get into it.

[Ike · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful and touching history of the Yiddish language and it's people. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator's voice was deeply soothing. Will definitely be picking up a physical copy at some point.

[Chirality · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a terrific cultural history of a unique language, I'd love for the author to add an update!

[Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Arash Ahsani · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tragically the average goyim will find this book truthful and informative.

[Emily Ledger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was easy to read and digest, and I highly recommend it.

[Salve58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fascinating. It combined everything I love, language, history, geography, sociology and politics.