The Times Again Re-Discovers Yiddish

A whole article in the Times about Yankl Ejdelman without mentioning Yugntruf. Still and all, it's a positive piece.

But I can't help myself. Why is Yiddish a "venerable tongue" in the headline? Surely the language is no older than English? And why is it called "the 1,000-year-old amalgam of Hebrew, German and assorted European dialects that was once the lingua franca of Europe’s Jews"?

Amalgam? (You mean, perhaps "language"?) Assorted European dialects? (Maybe "languages"?) Lingua franca? (Rather, "first language"?)

It's almost as if the reporter knew nothing about the topic she was writing on!

Naw.

Youth! Youth! Yeth?

Yugntruf gets its yugnt back. (Hat tip: Byuralistke.)

A Non-Profit's Molting Pains
The byuralistke speaks.

Yugntruf just changed its entire executive board and hired a new office manager. She's learning Yiddish as she starts her new job: her blog (in English) gives me some cause for optimism.

Yiddish Week 2007
Reflections, 1.

I'm back from the Yiddish Week. The strangest thing is how normal we all are, we fringe Yiddishists, all the flavors of (mostly American) Jewry represented: the usual Reconservadox spread plus a Charedi couple; secular folks; old and young; couples with jelly-smeared kids. And it feels like (maybe?) that there are slightly more people with kids and 2o-somethings among us. On the one hand, speaking Yiddish should be normal for those American Jews that do so. It should be a choice on the menu with the respect due it - by no means the only one, but definitely a possibility. On the other hand, ideologies that seem normal are tame. We don't want to be stamp collectors, do we?

The Emperor of Yiddish Words
Schaechter z"l, from 72nd Street to Bainbridgevke.

Mordkhe Schaechter, a linguist, lexicographer and rebbe of secular Yiddishists, died February 15. He was 79.

I became attracted to Yiddish when I was growing up in Louisville, Ky. Sitting in the back of Ms. Donsky’s German class, I often encountered Schaechter’s name while stumbling through week-old issues of the Forverts. On the basis of these references, I came to imagine a one-man Yiddish empire, an Academy of the Yiddish Language, publishing books, issuing edicts and deciding issues of style from a Yiddish Palace perched high in the mountains of Eastern Europe.

Read more in the Forward.