Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish

by Dovid Katz

Words on Fire offers a rich, engaging account of the history and evolution of the Yiddish language. Drawing on almost thirty years of scholarship, prominent Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz traces the origins of Yiddish back to the Europe of a thousand years ago, and shows how those origins are themselves an uninterrupted continuation of the previous three millennia of Jewish history and culture in the Near East. Words on Fire narrates the history of the language from medieval times onward, through its development as written literature, particularly for and by Jewish women. In the wake of secularizing and modernizing movements of the nineteenth century, Yiddish rose spectacularly in a few short years from a mass folk idiom to the language of sophisticated modern literature, theater, and journalism. Although a secular Yiddish culture no longer exists, Katz argues that its resurgence among religious Jewish communities ensures that Yiddish will still be a thriving language in the twenty-first century. For anyone interested in Jewish history and tradition, Words on Fire will be a definitive account of this remarkable language and the culture that created and sustained it.

Genres: History, Language, Jewish, Judaica, Linguistics, Judaism, Nonfiction

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Aaron Lansky's book Outwitting History made me sad, and happy, this book left me profoundly angry.

There is apparently a hidden history of Yiddish, and the Jewish people, that is glossed over by Jewish educators in their zeal to pump up the modern state of Israel. There's this whole blank period of Jewish history that's avoided, hundreds of years of Diaspora.

As it turns out, the Nazis landed a death-blow to speakers of Yiddish, but it didn't start with them. Assimilationists and Hebraists got the ball rolling, and continue to sell this idea of the "weak" Jews and their "dead" culture.

Thank you, Dovid Katz, for enlightening me.

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely loved this book. It's the equivalent to at least a semester's worth of instruction in the history (and future) of Yiddish, and covers everything from movement of people, to origins of language, European political ties, Zionism, theater, the secular movement, Hasidism, and modernity. Full of hope and solid scholarly writing, both in history and linguistics. Hands down the best book about Yiddish I've read (and I've read quite a few). Highly recommended.

[Kate Irwin-smiler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to have to come back to this book for a reread. There was so much that I felt completely overwhelmed. Ordinarily I inhale books but I barely made it through 10 pages at a time most days. (Until the snowstorm. Thanks, "Jonas"!)

Four thousand years of migrations and language history and politics and literature and religion. My brain hurts trying to hold it all in.

[Martin Johannes]

Bill:
It is LONG not the Full story you are telling us here.There where also Jews fighting Jews BEFOR the Thirty Years War .Make3 your Homework better .If you wanna tell a story you have to show the hole picture,Germans were just CURSED from Freemason,Jesuites SURE and SURE prussia (Preußen) Preußen waren NIE duetsch. Dies ist ein Kriegerischer stamm der sprache und Verhalten des volkes annimmt welches er infolgedessen LANGSAM Assimiliert.Sie brauchten 300 Jahre um alle deutschen staaten zu verdrängen und ALLE waren sie zu brauäug . Aber ist ja noch mal gutgegangen ;-)

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dovid Katz was born and grew up in Brooklyn, a son of Yiddish poet Menke Katz. He loves Yiddish and the Ashkenazi civilization that produced it, unlike the many Jewish Communists and Zionists who actually grew up in it and came to hate it, and now teaches the language in Vilnius. Dovid Katz retells the oft-told story of Ashkenazi Jews with an emphasis on Yiddish, the spoken language in the traditional Ashkenazi triad of Yiddish-Hebrew-Aramaic. The oldest known Yiddish sentence comes from 1272; when printing was invented, it was used for Yiddish just as it was for other European vernaculars. The tale of Sir Bevis of Hampton, known in Russia as the Tale of Bova the King's Son, had a 16th-century Yiddish version; a 17th-century Yiddish translation of the Hebrew Bible was probably the all-time bestselling Yiddish book, just like a 17th-century English translation of the Bible was for English. Sholom Aleikhem and Isaac Bashevis Singer make appearances, and so do many Bundists, Communists, New York labor organizers, linguists and rabbis. Three groups of people speak the language now. There are a few hundred thousand elderly Jews born in prewar Eastern Europe. There are a few thousand secular Yiddish enthusiasts, not all of them Jewish; Katz quotes a 1997 article by Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard, who says that "These days, Jewish (and non-Jewish) spokesmen for gays and lesbians, feminists and neo-Trotskyites freely identify their sense of personal injury with the cause of Yiddish." And there are the Ultra-Orthodox Jews of Bnei Brak, Williamsburg and Stamford Hill, not all of whom speak Yiddish but hundreds of thousands do, though their Yiddish has evolved far from the classic Yiddish of interwar Eastern Europe. In 2002 in Israel I heard the language spoken by an old woman sitting on a bench near an old folks' home in Raanana, but taking a bus in Bnei Brak, I heard nothing but Hebrew. There are fewer of them than of secular or non-Ultra-Orthodox religious Jews, but they reproduce much more and do not intermarry, so the future of the language is safe with them.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm only part of the way in. It's well written and a pleasure to read, even when I don't agree with all of his assertions and conclusions. Like the YIVO crowd, he lauds Litvak yiddish, but I am a half-breed (Litvak/Ukrainish), so I don't mind.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

that's a great read if you want to find out about Yiddish and you're not a full-blood academic. Badly referenced but Katz knows what he's talking about

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oy, mit 'nem yidishen mazl?