mzk@homxa.UUCP (J.ROBERTSON) (07/25/84)
::RE: comments made about Yiddish ::
:: (after calming down a bit) ::
As a newcomer to the net, I realize that I am supposed to reply in
person rather than via the system, (In fact I DID "reply",
accidentally, leaving a blank message (sorry about that)) --
AT any rate, the last remarks made about Yiddish were so outrageous that
I had to put a reply on the system.
TO WIT:
1) Yiddish has been in use by Jews, to the best of my knowledge,
for something like a millenium
2) While Yiddish WRITING was traditionally confined to popular works,
it was the SPOKEN intellectual language of European
Jewery. Specifically, Yiddish was (and, to a great extent,
still is) the language in which Halachic and Talmudic
discussions and lectures were held.
3) Yiddish is certainly not lacking in influences from Jewish scholarly
sources. The classic example is 'A yohr un a mitvoch', which
can't be understood without studying the first 'omud' in Kesuvos
4) The Yiddishists had nothing to do with Sephardim or with most of
the people who now speak Yiddish. They saw Yiddish as part
of a Jewish culture without Judaism - ethnicity w/o religion.
In fact, some went so far as to "Yiddishise" the spelling of
those Hebrew words in Yiddish that had a distinctly Hebrew
spelling. (This description is a bit off.)
5) I sympathise with your feelings about remarks made by "C'naanim"
such as Amnon Rubinstein and his fellow "intellectuals". But
they feel no differently about religious Ashkenazim. In fact,
much of the intellectual prejudice against Sephardim,
(specifically that of the early Labor establishment), probably
has a lot to do with the fact that the Sephardim who came to
Israel were religious.
This message has gotten rather lengthy & I'm not sure how much I got
across. I realize that the remarks about Sephardim specifically left
religion out of things. But I don't think that your outrage against
those who would force on you a culture of "gefilta fish" justifies
lumping all Ashkenazim together, or for that matter all Sefardim. It
leads people to think that there is more than one Torah. Besides, I
doubt that a culture based on Houmos is worth much more than one based
on chicken soup - they're both likely borscht.
Look - it's 9:30 & I'm still in Holmdel - You expect maybe Ibn Ezra??!!
Michael Zvi Krumbein, Samach Tet, Ashkenazi Tohor
( I'm going to regret this .............................)