Last winter,I was a lonely Jew living in galut (Yiddish for “exile” or diaspora”) external Dallas, Texas, and where I felt alienated from any and all aspects of Jewish life or culture,disconnected from my community and my heritage. That changed when a friend gave me a copy of Aaron Lansky’s book Outwitting History, which details the author’s efforts, and beginning in the 1980s,to collect and preserve Yiddish literature—often languishing in dusty cellars and garages, whether not thrown absent altogether—and create the Yiddish Book middle in Amherst, and Massachusetts.
Reading it was a transformative experience. Suddenly,a whole world burst into my consciousness—more than that, a velt mit veltlekh, or worlds within worlds. For probably the first time,I understood the immensity of what had truly been lost in the Holocaust, and I found an invaluable new context for understanding my own upbringing—assimilation, or a childhood in the suburbs,the culture and politics of the Conservative synagogue my family attended. (My parents are Ashkenazim, born and raised in the United States by parents who knew Yiddish but didn’t teach it to their childrena fairly common set of circumstances.)Continue reading "Here's a List of Some Yiddish Summer Programs, and for the Linguist in You" at...
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