Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
New York : [London : BasicBooks ; Perseus Running distributor], 2004
Description
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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member nbmars
This book takes the incredibly interesting approach of following the language of a wandering people in order to study where they went, how it affected them, and the effects of the places they went on the language they spoke.
Throughout history the Jews have been a diaspora nation – that is, they
The vocabulary of Yiddish uniquely illuminated, as Primo Levi wrote, the disparity between the “divine vocation [of the Jews] and the daily misery of existence. … The Jewish people, after the dispersion, have lived this conflict for a long time and dolorously, and have drawn from it, side by side with its wisdom, also its laughter.”
Katz first takes us on a history of the beginnings of Yiddish – a very interesting journey. It starts with Hebrew, which was a fusion of Aramaic and Canaanite, reflecting the composition of the tribes that came together in Israel. Sometime after the first Diaspora of Jews (eviction from Israel) in 586 B.C., Hebrew split from Aramaic. Jewish religious documents also separated linguistically: the Mishna (law) was written in Hebrew and the Talmud (textual analysis) was written in Aramaic. Jews at that time still resided in the Near East: Babylonia, Persia, and Greece, followed by Spain and Portugal.
After the seventh-century rise of Islam, it wasn’t long before persecution sent Jews on the move again, this time to European lands. The Jews in German-speaking Europe became known as the Ashkenazim, and they were the creators of Yiddish. (The Jews who stayed in Spain and Portugal were the Sephardim.) This new language fused Jewish Aramaic (itself containing some Hebrew) with medieval German dialects. The language of Ashkenaz became known over time as “yidish” or Yiddish- which means “Jewish.”
Because many men spent the day studying the Mishna and the Talmud but the women did not, Yiddish became known as the language of women (a derogatory denotation). But the women, who were the caretakers, brought their children up to speak this language as well, making it the “mama-loschen” (both literally and figuratively, the mother tongue).
When the Crusades began in Western Europe, the butchery of Jews took on new life, and the Jews again moved, this time to Eastern Europe. Ironically, although East Europe was more backward, its very backwardness (including adherence to paganism and late arrival to Christianity) made it a safer haven for Jews. Katz notes “The promises of physical safety and economic freedom stimulated a massive eastward exodus” with Poland at the center. Once again Yiddish was transformed as Slavic words were added to the language. A dialectical divide also developed, as pronunciation in the south of Europe became different than that in the north.
The Enlightenment brought more change to the Jewish community. German Jews wanted the opportunity to advance in society, which meant disavowing their Jewish roots and either opting for secularization or converting outright to Christianity. [Neither route saved them in the end from the Nazi machine.] These maskilim (enlightened men) “made eradication of Yiddish a primary platform of their program.” They even pressured the government to make German mandatory for legal transactions.
Later, when Jews sought protection in Palestine even before the Holocaust, these Jews too rejected Yiddish as a language indicative of “weakness.” There were actually gangs of Jews in Palestine who beat up those who persisted in speaking Yiddish instead of using Hebrew as an everyday language.
There were two other significant causes of attrition of Yiddish speakers. One was of course the Holocaust itself, in which more than six million Jews perished. The second was the attack on Jews by Stalin’s Soviet regime, during which every single Yiddish writer was murdered.
The final assault on Yiddish is going on around us today: the quest for modernization and the desire for dissociation with “the funny, poor immigrants” and the victims of the Holocaust. Today, Yiddish is mostly spoken only among the Ultraorthodox Jews, who also have the largest reproduction rate of any Jewish group. But these Haredim reject many types of literature and art outside of religion as frivolous, and it is unknown what the ultimate fate of Yiddish will be.
Katz’s book is full of many more interesting stories about the development of the language and the men and women who played a critical role in bringing it about. His research on the language is impressive and his love for the language is obvious. His optimism seems to come from the very language itself: in all the years of pogroms, burnings, ghettoization, massacres, bloodbaths, and discriminatory legislation, the Yiddish language retains a large number of words, concepts, and sayings related to hope and to humor.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in tracing the history of a people through their language; for anyone interested in the rise and fall of the Yiddish language; and for anyone interested in a good story about a literary niche that was once vibrant and vital, and now is almost disappeared.
Throughout history the Jews have been a diaspora nation – that is, they
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have been scattered throughout the world, considering themselves to be in exile from “the Promised Land.” Their “language chain” (comprised of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish) achieved vitality “by combining elements of the previous inherited language with the surrounding non-Jewish language.” Katz observes of Yiddish, “It is a language whose everyday words, naturally spoken, continue to burn with ancient ideas, humor, and psychic content that have come down the line of generation-to-generation language transmission, from antiquity into the twenty-first century.” The vocabulary of Yiddish uniquely illuminated, as Primo Levi wrote, the disparity between the “divine vocation [of the Jews] and the daily misery of existence. … The Jewish people, after the dispersion, have lived this conflict for a long time and dolorously, and have drawn from it, side by side with its wisdom, also its laughter.”
Katz first takes us on a history of the beginnings of Yiddish – a very interesting journey. It starts with Hebrew, which was a fusion of Aramaic and Canaanite, reflecting the composition of the tribes that came together in Israel. Sometime after the first Diaspora of Jews (eviction from Israel) in 586 B.C., Hebrew split from Aramaic. Jewish religious documents also separated linguistically: the Mishna (law) was written in Hebrew and the Talmud (textual analysis) was written in Aramaic. Jews at that time still resided in the Near East: Babylonia, Persia, and Greece, followed by Spain and Portugal.
After the seventh-century rise of Islam, it wasn’t long before persecution sent Jews on the move again, this time to European lands. The Jews in German-speaking Europe became known as the Ashkenazim, and they were the creators of Yiddish. (The Jews who stayed in Spain and Portugal were the Sephardim.) This new language fused Jewish Aramaic (itself containing some Hebrew) with medieval German dialects. The language of Ashkenaz became known over time as “yidish” or Yiddish- which means “Jewish.”
Because many men spent the day studying the Mishna and the Talmud but the women did not, Yiddish became known as the language of women (a derogatory denotation). But the women, who were the caretakers, brought their children up to speak this language as well, making it the “mama-loschen” (both literally and figuratively, the mother tongue).
When the Crusades began in Western Europe, the butchery of Jews took on new life, and the Jews again moved, this time to Eastern Europe. Ironically, although East Europe was more backward, its very backwardness (including adherence to paganism and late arrival to Christianity) made it a safer haven for Jews. Katz notes “The promises of physical safety and economic freedom stimulated a massive eastward exodus” with Poland at the center. Once again Yiddish was transformed as Slavic words were added to the language. A dialectical divide also developed, as pronunciation in the south of Europe became different than that in the north.
The Enlightenment brought more change to the Jewish community. German Jews wanted the opportunity to advance in society, which meant disavowing their Jewish roots and either opting for secularization or converting outright to Christianity. [Neither route saved them in the end from the Nazi machine.] These maskilim (enlightened men) “made eradication of Yiddish a primary platform of their program.” They even pressured the government to make German mandatory for legal transactions.
Later, when Jews sought protection in Palestine even before the Holocaust, these Jews too rejected Yiddish as a language indicative of “weakness.” There were actually gangs of Jews in Palestine who beat up those who persisted in speaking Yiddish instead of using Hebrew as an everyday language.
There were two other significant causes of attrition of Yiddish speakers. One was of course the Holocaust itself, in which more than six million Jews perished. The second was the attack on Jews by Stalin’s Soviet regime, during which every single Yiddish writer was murdered.
The final assault on Yiddish is going on around us today: the quest for modernization and the desire for dissociation with “the funny, poor immigrants” and the victims of the Holocaust. Today, Yiddish is mostly spoken only among the Ultraorthodox Jews, who also have the largest reproduction rate of any Jewish group. But these Haredim reject many types of literature and art outside of religion as frivolous, and it is unknown what the ultimate fate of Yiddish will be.
Katz’s book is full of many more interesting stories about the development of the language and the men and women who played a critical role in bringing it about. His research on the language is impressive and his love for the language is obvious. His optimism seems to come from the very language itself: in all the years of pogroms, burnings, ghettoization, massacres, bloodbaths, and discriminatory legislation, the Yiddish language retains a large number of words, concepts, and sayings related to hope and to humor.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in tracing the history of a people through their language; for anyone interested in the rise and fall of the Yiddish language; and for anyone interested in a good story about a literary niche that was once vibrant and vital, and now is almost disappeared.
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Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2004
Physical description
xviii, 494 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
9780465037308