Why didn't Yiddish become Israel's Official Language?
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- Опубликовано: 19 янв 2024
- Hebrew, extinct for over a thousand years, was brought back as the living language of Israel. But Yiddish had been a language of a majority of the world's Jews for centuries. what happened?
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#israel #yiddish #language
Because Hebrew unites all Jews, while Yiddish is exclusive to Ashkenazi Jews
And only Eastern Ashkenazim, as Western Yiddish had been extinct since the early 19th century.
Good to see you around here @@SamAronow
Roll credits
@@SamAronowthere was a western dialect?
Could you elaborate on its origins?
@@vod96 Ashkenazim (German Jews) in Western Europe (Western Ashkenazim) generally were more integrated into society before WWI than their cousins (Eastern Ashkenazim) in Eastern Europe. One of my professors at Purdue who taught WWII history, Gunther Rothenberg (eternal memory) was the son of a Jewish German officer of the German Army of WWI.
It’s worth noting that the vast majority of native Yiddish-speakers today are in the US, in Haredi communities mostly in New York.
There's quite a lot here in Buenos Airea, Argentina, too.
oh nice it’s Sam Aronow, love your work
And that, while he portrays it like the choice happened when the jews from Europe arrived in Israel, the fact is that the zionists that lived in Israel already spoke hebrew, the holocaust refugees assimilated.
Yes, exactly. (1) It should also be noted there are different congregations there too-the main 2 are Satmar & Chabad [& a number of smaller courts]. I often go to an area with a large number of Orthodox-Marcy, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, & Williamsburg (the other larger area is to the southeast Borough Park/Flatbush/Midwood) & have spent a lot of time amongst the people & shops
(I have a bad habit (that annoys my friends & girl) of talking to random people & asking them about their background-“I study sociaI sciences”, I explain to random people as they begin look at me wearily lol).
(2) While you can often see Chabad billboards, Satmar keeps to themselves.
Satmar also happens to be Anti-Zi, & is thus rather distinct.
(3) Orthodox have bought the schools & housing projects, truIy making the neighborhood their own (old factories & apartments were renovated or torn down & replaced, w/ many having the Jerusalem Sandstone Style).
(4) Aside from business & passing through, I enjoy going there b/c no one bothers you, it’s safe, & although some people will treat you coldly, I’ve occasionally meet some nice people & have some a good conversations.
I actually met some Orthodox who’s family came from the same area as my grandfather.
(5) Between those 2 areas, there are more than 300k people (out of 1.6 miI Jewish people in NYC).
(6) If NYC was 5 people it would essentially be 1 BIack, 1 Hispanic, 1 Jew, 1 White, & 1 Asian (in the broader British terminology).
(7) I also enjoy going there, b/c it is one of the few places I get Germanic language practice (I speak Spanish much better than German, b/c of the abundance of opportunities for practice, that i learned it in schooI, & worked with & grew-up with Spanish people & kids as half of my best friends (not the case w/ German after my dad passed & I forgot most of my Polish even though I spoke with my grandparents as they passed when i was 12)).
I could occasionally get some people to go back & forth for a little, although sometimes I find out the person is Sephardic & only knows some of the language from circumstance (i.e. work & the neighborhood).
(8) All and all an interesting place.
One time we walked our little pig through & to the park, and got a mixed response lol.
neat
Excellent work! Too often the revival of Hebrew, and particularly Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s contributions to the language, tend to be treated as the totality of Modern Hebrew’s origins, when it’s roots are older and more widespread than that. Of course Hebrew had continued to be spoken and evolve naturally throughout the Early Modern Period, but the main thing was that while more _people_ spoke Yiddish, people spoke Hebrew _in more places,_ which made it a better lingua franca. See American Jewish soldiers during WWII trying to chat up Moroccan Jewish women in Yiddish.
It’s worth emphasizing that Herzl was opposed to Hebrew too; he wanted German to be the Jewish national language (and took a dim view to any kind of overt Jewish culture). Despite his success as an organizer, his actual ideas were very unpopular, and the Germanist movement in Zionism was always very fringe. By contrast, most first- and second- generation Zionists saw their movement as _primarily_ a cultural effort, with independent statehood not becoming a mainstream goal until the Second World War.
The Legend is here. I wish more youtubers would adopt your style of videos!
I was wondering weather or not you where going to cover events post 1922 in the jewish world. I hope you will, but i can understadn why you might not.
@@elibrahams5566 Of course he would, history never ceases. He's just going at a slower pace because our knowledge becomes denser the closer we get to the present...
did they commit Zina with them?
Glad to see you commenting extra context here!
Hope that detail about US troops talking up Moroccans in Yiddish and failing ends up in a video at some point.
Jews were not expelled from North Africa , but it was the work of the Jewish alliance.
Algerians Jews became French with decree Cremiex ( french Zionist) and left with the piers noirs in 1962
Zionists paid the king of Morocco $400 per Jew to let them go to Palestine
Zionism collaborated with Hitler and Arab countries to send Jews to Palestine, they also planted bombs to create panic so that Arab Jews move to Palestine.
Why all those lies?
As a Christian growing up in East London after WW2 Yiddish was widely spoken among the many Jewish immigrants who were my close neighbours and it was the first foreign language I learnt. I was never fluent, but understood much and I still use Yiddish words today . . . mostly with my old friends, as younger generations don’t understand it - indeed it’s surprising to them that the language exists.
As an addition to my native English, I think it’s a colourful and vibrant extension.
As a Catholic who spoke French, Arabic, Syriac, and English since infancy, I always found it funny that I'm fluent in Yiddish since moving to the States whilst my Hebrew is limited to using it as the Loyshn Kodosh, just like my Jewish friends. My family in Israel - all South Lebanon Army refugees whose children are raised to be patriotic Lebanese-Israelis - went from French, Arabic, and Syriac direct to Modern Hebrew almost without noticing, to hear them tell it. I love Yiddish for the same reasons you mention: it's such an artful and nuanced tongue. They don't see that. To them, it's foreign as to why anyone would want to speak what they see as muddled German. (NB: I'm also fluent in German thanks to six years of high school and university plus needing it for work, and I don't see Yiddish as anything but its own language.)
The fact is, the Jewish culture that I experience and the Jewish culture they experience are radically different. To my friend circle, Yiddish is the mamaloyshn whilst Hebrew is for the shul. To my relatives in Israel, Yiddish is a foreign tongue used by frum Jews and Hebrew is nothing more than the language of Israel. What I think is missing in the middle is that all agree how Rabbinical Hebrew and the Hebrew of the Torah are radically different as well. Hebrew today is not the Hebrew of the yeshiva: it is its own creature revived from the ashes and embraced by a nation who has the same phoenix's origin.
Also, Yiddish has also had an influence over American English (especially New York English).
@@leullakew9579 Indeed! Coming from l'Acadie meant learning a whole new Yinglish! Lol
Please talk about Judeo-Persian and Ladino languages
That's an interesting topic he should do that!
Also Judeo Arabic and Judeo Italian
Yes that would be very interesting
Мозарабик
Ladino 🤔
I think Yiddish was not chosen so as to not antagonize Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who didn't speak it.
yes, and because it sounds so awful 🤣
@@kakaroto7578 Hebrew also sounds horrible, very German-like.
the modern reconstructed Hebrew with the ugly ashkkenazi accent sucks
@@kakaroto7578 It doesn't though.
@@tylersmith3139 my bobe and zeide (my father's side) were from Russia and Poland, they spoke all the time in yiddish and it sounded horrible. My bobe and zeide (my mother's side) were argentinians but their parents were from a place nowadays is belarus and their yiddish didn't sound that bad. Maybe it bring you some nice memories, but you have to admit it isn't the nicest language.
I always thought that Hebrew was self explanatory choice. (choosing ancestral language, which survived due to religious texts just seems too tempting) What was rather new was, in contrast, how strong position Yiddish had. It’s history and division, interesting.
Basically because Yiddish was a language largely spoken by European Jews, and a significant portion of Israel's Jewish population is Mizrahi (Middle Eastern).
Don't tell the leftists that, it totally spoils their whole, "they're colonizers" argument. Kind of hard to be a colonizer when you've been pogrommed out of your house and had to flee to Israel so as to not be unalived.
Israel was founded first and foremost for Ashkenazi Jews and they still are the economic, political and cultural elite.
Yeah Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews make up more of the Jews in Israel than Ashkenazi.
Lol Israel would have to legalize genetic testing for a statement like that to be taken seriously
And in north africa, no?
There were Hebrew schools in Jerusalem and Safed even in 1500s(and Jewish pilgrims spoke with local Jews in Hebrew)but yea by 1920s it was inevitable,you had entire generation of Hebrew speakers by then.Yiddish will probably not "die out" completely in the our lifetime or even in coming decades(mainly because of Ultra Orthodox people I think it will even grow),but Ultra Orthodox culture in Israel is already assimilating just slower so it is probably inevitable in the end,I think in larger context though like Ladino/Juhuri and all other Jewish dialects worldwide which are now more or less extinct,Yiddish will be aswell in the end,if this is good or bad I don't know.
How can they assimilate when become a sizeable chunk of the population rather quick
I pray that Yiddish and Ladino get revitalized
comment contains ignorance, vast majority of Haredi Jews, in Israel and America, do NOT speak understand or know Yiddish.
why would peole who consider themselves "ultra orthodox" use foreign derived langauge like Yiddish ?
I speak Yiddish. I believe it will become a religious language but very few will speak it (just like Hebrew used to be).
We have literally thousands of volumes of Chassidic and Litvish texts written in the language with some of the greatest Jewish thinkers to ever exist writing exclusively in Yiddish.
So people will still learn from the texts, and so the language will stick around. But I have little faith that anyone out side of “ultra-Orthodox” (some people put me in that category as a Chabadnik) will speak it in 100 years.
It would have been nice to see a Yiddish sentence and its German and English counterpart...
You forgot to mention its impact on many Austrian dialects. Many Austrians use Yiddish expressions without even knowing it!
The state of Israel was established in May 14, 1948, and not in 1949 as you state at the beginning of your video.
Because Yiddish is not the historical language that unites all Jews.
Hebrew and Aramaic are, but Israel chose Hebrew as their official language.
One interesting thing is that Judeo-Arabic which is basically the Yiddish of Mizrachim (middle eastern jews) wasn't considered as an option for Israel language by the mostly Ashkenazi zionists.
Ashkenazi that coming.
I mean there were also massive sephardi, ladino-speaking communities, especially pre-shoah. Hebrew was used because it was still somewhat of a lingua franca amongst jewry worldwide
Why would they consider a language wthat was spoken by less than 10% of all jews at the time and being very regionally specific to a few communities to be the nationsl language?
@@LuKing2 I guess because it was the language of the jews already living there
Judeo-Arabic was as widely varied as regular Arabic is for one, so it wouldn’t be easy to standardize. Let alone the fact that in most places it was spoken, it was dwarfed by Ladino.
Hopefully Yiddish and Ladino gets preserved into the future, despite their lack of official usage. They're both such interesting languages.
No. Jews should speak Hebrew, not German or Spanish.
@@tompeled6193 I agree they shouldn't speak Spanish or German. They should instead speak Ladino or Yiddish in addition to Hebrew. They are different languages you know.
Israel is a part of the language Spanish academy representing Ladino
Hello Hilbert. I was impressed that you did not seem to mention the film Yentl once, but then realised it was probably just me showing my age.
I dont know what this video says but the real answer is simple. Zionism colonialist project required a religious componentn to atract settlers form across the world. So they decided to revive their dead language, hebrew, used for lithurgical purposes only like latin, and that way reinforce the idea that it was the "chosen" people going back to their land, instead of ethnonationalist blood thirsty colonialist going to steal land.
Yep. Hebrew was used to counter Arabic which was lingua franca. Yiddish is not a real language you can't use it academically, formally nor can it assimilate Arabic words
100%
Good to see Yiddish getting official support finally, it would be a terrible loss not to preserve it, but it totally made sense to chose Hebrew as the official language.
I'm a L2 Yiddish speaker and I wondered this myself thanks for posting.
Learn Hebrew instead. Yiddish is not needed when we have Hebrew.
@@tompeled6193 not when you live among Hasidic jews and want to converse with them
Moshe Moshe Moshe
There is The National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst Massachusetts. It is a huge library with not just books, but periodicals as well. They offer hour long tours of the place
They have a RUclips channel with a ton of videos interviewing people about Yiddish.
Funny, I'm right next door!
Excellent upload!
This is crazy and a bit scary, i was talking to my gf about just this topic yesterday. Thanks for the history lesson
400 AD is way too late for the transition from Hebrew to Greek and Aramaic. Those languages were already spoken during the late Second Temple period, which lasted from 516 BC to 70 AD. 400 AD was centuries after the Second Temple was destroyed.
The Septaguint-the oldest attested Koine Greek version of the Old Testament-also dates to the Second Temple period, which attests to the wide understanding of Koine Greek among at least the “Hellenized” Jews. Actually, the Septuagint is dated to the third century BC; did you possibly mix up 400 BC and 400 AD?
Mishnaic Hebrew was still spoken in the first and second centuries and was replaced slowly by Aramaic. It was still used to write the Mishna, around the year 200 CE, and there are records that it was continued till the 5th century but not as the main language.
@@elilevineg I’m aware Hebrew was still spoken and written even after the Second Temple, but I’m fairly certain it stopped being the everyday conversational language long before that point. My understanding is that, if they did historically exist, Jesus and his disciples would have certainly spoken Aramaic as their first language. And the age of the Septuagint also suggests that Koine Greek was already widely used by Hellenistic Jews centuries before then.
Your channel has blown up mate since I first started watching, well done!
Good video, but one important clarification is needed - this video makes it sound like Zionism was only the movement of Jews to the British mandate of Palestine after the first world war, while in fact Zionism started as a movement decades earlier, in the late 19th century, back when the territory was still under the rule of the Ottoman empire.
Although you made some minor errors, you raised some important points -- but also missed others. You were correct to bring up the expulsion of entire Jewish communities from North Africa (Sephardim) and from the Gulf (Mizrahim) and that most certainly played a role. However... You skipped over some of the other social and linguistic diversity, especially as found among Western European Jews. For some years, there were tensions between those German Jews who had settled in Israel before the start of the war and Yiddish-speaking Jews. For many Yiddish-speaking Jews, there was no going back. Their Poland, their Czechoslovakia, their Ukraine, their Lithuania was long, long gone. For German Jews, there was no memory of having their "own" language. They simply spoke German and they saw themselves as German. It was only their children and grandchildren, Israeli-born-and-raised, who spoke Hebrew fluently and saw themselves as Israelis.
But... There were others. There were Italian, French, Greek, Dutch and Belgian Jews who left Europe for Israel. They were Italian speakers, French speakers, Greek speakers, Dutch speakers... There were also British and American Jews who left for Israel. Golda Meir, for example, might have been born in Kiev, but she had mostly grown up in the USA and was a naturalised American citizen. In recent years, with the return of anti-Semitism as a serious problem in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA, more Jews have been moving to Israel. Jews who fled persecution in the USSR and those who left after the collapse of the USSR largely spoke Russian.
Israelis claim "Zionism is not a settler colonial project" yet they come from anywhere but Palestine 🤣
@@_blank-_
Because their enemies expelled them.
@@_blank-_ "Palestine" is the name chosen by the Romans to spite Jewish people in their own homeland. Although the Romans expelled most Jews from their homeland, there was always a Jewish presence there. Until the Islamic invasion, it was a mostly Christian region. As part of various Islamic imperial projects, the area gained a Muslim majority -- but still had Christian and Jewish minorities. For example, the Ottomans importing Muslims from Bosnia, Albania and elsewhere in their empire to ensure that certain regions gained a Muslim majority. Nearly 20pc of Israel's population is Arab. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian population. Compare that to, say, the West Bank or Gaza where growing chauvinism among "Palestinian" Arabs has led to life becoming almost impossible for Arab Christians and Druze. Israeli Arabs sit in the Knesset and even formed a part of the last coalition government. There's also no real desire among Israeli Arabs to live in "Palestine".
@@victormeidan1062 Yes, Europe was (and still is) so antisemitic we want them all in Palestine so they are not here. We are antisemitic and islamophobic, what a surprise.
What's your point?
@@Bunnyroo7 What if I told you I want freedom and self-determination for all people, including Israelis and Palestinians (who you deny exist... which is a thing fascists do by the way)?
Also, I'd be willing to bet bombing and displacement by Israel didn't help Christian or Druze Palestinians feel comfortable in Palestine.
It’s a shame such an effort to revive Irish as Ireland’s language wasn’t made after their independence in 1922.
This is fascinating, thank you for this
Very informative video.Many thanks.
If one look Jewish Israeli's demographics this is inevitable. Most Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi, but either Sephardi or Mizrahi, the descendents of Jews from Iberia and the Muslim world. Yemeni Jews especially have been in the Yishuv long before '48, alongside the Old Yishuv, that is the Jews who "never left" or returned centuries before modern zionism and their descendants.
If there was no Holocaust the proportion of Ashkenazim would be a lot higher, I suppose, but even then Hebrew is the only viable lingua franca. Despite being ""dead"" (Hebrew revival goes back centuries but got really going in the 19th century) Jews basically everywhere (Ethiopia is the major exception) knew Hebrew.
I think Yiddish was inevitably on the way out. With a choice between the two, Hebrew is certainly the choice, either for an individual to learn or for the state itself. No contest.
The ashkenazi jews is why the state of Israel exists,
Stop misleading the people.
They make more than 40% of the settlers,
They're the ruling group,
They're white European men .
They believed in this shit even before the 18th century .
If Yemenite Jews were already in Israel before 1948, why doesn't modern Hebrew include the sounds 'Ayin and Het that they use?
Those sounds are difficult to pronounce for non-Arabic speakers@@saadalameri
@@saadalameri Modern Hebrew was consciously based on Sephardic pronunciations, and that's what was taught. There were many different regional accents for Hebrew, but the guys who began to push for a more widespread revival of Hebrew in the 19th century thought the Sephardic pronunciation was nicer on the ear, it also had a smaller sound inventory which made it easier to learn and speak. Even if almost all Jews could read some Hebrew, not everyone spoke it great, especially since it was mostly used as a liturgical and not conversational language. Secular Jews had stopped emphasizing it as well.
I'm sure that there are Haredi Jews who still have different ways of pronouncing Hebrew outside of Israel. I don't speak Hebrew personally, but this is all stuff I've heard about reading about Jewish history from the period.
As a Hebrew and Jiddisz speaker I have nothing to correct. Excellent perspective and explanation!
Less intelligent mixed Turkish
Except some historical errors.
Literally the first sentence of this is wrong. Israel was announced in 1947 and officially became independent in 1948
True
Suspicious thumbnail that depicted area C of the West Bank as Israeli.
Israel was declared in 1948. The war ended in 1949.
As an Ashkenazic myself, I am glad that it didn't become a national language, because one it is Tribal and two, it would not unite the Jewish people!
very interesting video, never thought about this before
Well done, hilbert
The metrolect of the city I live in, Berlin, has many Yiddish loanwords, bc Berlin was always a centre of Jewish life in Germany.
Mischpoke, meschugga, Schikse, Maloche are all words used in Berlinerisch.
NYC Englisch is another example of a metrolect influenced by its city's large Jewish community.
Modern Hebrew has a distinctive Yiddish substrate because the children of its earliest proponents, who became Modern Hebrew's first native speakers, had a tendency to rely upon the grammatical structures they were more used to hearing. That makes it very different from ancient Hebrew.
Kinda but I'd argue the RaMHaL (Rabbi Moshe Ben Haim of Luzzato, Italy) 400 years earlier played more of a role in that
Absolute delight. Thank you.
Thanks for an interesting video. :)
Does your number of Yiddish speakers include those learning it on Duolingo?
I think the number refers to first language speakers, because there are definitely more speakers than that just in Israel.
Well, Yiddish is not going anywhere in the State of New York, with over 200,000 native speakers, most of whom do not speak or understand Israeli Hebrew.
Yiddish itself is mostly based on German to the point that if they speak slowly and pay attention they can understand each other. It's probably closer to German than Russian is to Ukrainian. It also has a very strong influence from Slavic languages, but they wouldn't understand each other whatsoever.
Hebrew revival was spectacularly successful. I believe part of it was that ideologically motivated mostly atheist left wing immigrants wanted to create a Hebrew (as opposed to Jewish) identity, not defined by religion and free from being dominated by diaspora traditions. Secular Israeli identity is completely different from any other Jewish identity in the world, unlike the religious, especially Hasidic Israelis. Surprisingly, in public life (like weddings, conversions, funerals etc) only Orthodox Judaism is accepted as an official form of Judaism. It's a bit of a paradox, considering how secular most early Zionists were. I speak modern Hebrew as my third language but I have no idea what the hell they are saying during funerals in the ancient Hebrew.
I am actually surprised English didn't have a chance. Almost all Israelis speak it.
It's also interesting how the Arabic culture had profoundly influenced Hebrew culture, both because of the Sephardic Jews and because of proximity to local Arab population. I'm sure there are studies on that.
One reason Yiddish might experience more acceptance in Israel is because many Yiddish-speaking ultra-religious communities align with right wing parties, and the right wing pretty much ran the country for over two decades, and most likely will do even more so for the foreseeable future.
keep in mind that there are also dialects of Yiddish like Litvak or Ukrainisch or Polanish.
your last paragraph is very wrong Israel since it's founding promote the Idea of "Hebrews speak Hebrew" i.e old language bad Hebrew good
for example my father born in 1961 in a Maghrebi Jewish town in Israel is one of very few people from his generation who grew up with Arabic aswell as Hebrew at home, most of his friends only knew Hebrew with a distinctive accent and borrowings from Tunisian and Algerian Arabic but still no actual Arabic knowledge
@@israelilocal I generally agree. My last paragraph is more political than factual.
I had a weird experience working in NYC B&H photography store. For about a year I, as the least Jewish person in there, was the only one to speak Hebrew. Then we got a couple of Uzbeks and one Argentinian. It’s weird, man!
Anyway, I absolutely admire Hebrew language culture. My sister lectures in Hebrew about medieval Christian art and if I didn’t speak it I wouldn’t understand it.
I don’t have that connection to Yiddish and I only understand parts of it because I studied German in school.
Israel was declared on 1948, not 49 our war of independance was won by 1949
You mean your occupation of Palestine started in 49
@bakaplier3809 Palestine was not formed until 1993
It was a mandate named after the roaman province to humiliate the jews in 80ad
Palestinian as a name for Arabs who live here was invented by the mufti of Jerusalem in the 20s, to show the difference from Jordanians who were nomadic Bedouins and not falachs who dwelled in cities.
It became popular after 1967 when Jordan and Egypt decided to withdraw citizenship from.those who.lived in territories Israel retrieved in the 6 day war
Because Yiddish started from the cultural intermingling of Jews in the West, and not the original language of the Jews?
All Jews have a connection either a Hebrew, while only Ashkenazi Jews have a connection with Yiddish
Yiddish is a German language. It's basically a German dialect written in Hebrew
Very interesting.
For the Jews of the MidEast, "Mizrachim", Arabic was the language of their "dhimmitude". Yiddish was the European equivalent of a "dhimmi" language for Jews in central and eastern Europe. Only a revived Hebrew could function as the "cultural binder" for the citizens of Restored Israel. Not to revive Hebrew was the linguistic equivalent of accepting the offer made by European colonizers of Africa, of a new Jewish homeland in Kenya or South Africa. Nothing but the original could do. And it was an amazing development that in less than 100 years, the language was indeed revived and did also create the binding element that could make 'one people' out of Yemeni, Moroccan, Iraqi, Polish, German and Russian Jews (not to mention Jewish immigrants from America). Ought one to embrace the slogan, "זאל לעבן די מענטשן פון ישראל" or "עם ישראל חי" ?
Modern Hebrew and Israel aren't the original. That cultural revival reminds me so much of fascist movements wanting to bring back a glorified past. Do you consider American Jews speaking English as "dhimmis"?
@@_blank-_Stay mad lmaoo עמ ישראל חי
In America its different because they went there by choice while they coildve gone to Israel but it still is because of the exile when the Jewish identity took a large hit and because of the hit to the Jewish identity they live in America. The thing is that its not a glorified past its the language of the Jews we are the Jews we want to speak our language its like saying an Italian living in america teaching his children italian is fascist its a bit dumb@@_blank-_
@@_blank-_
Modern Hebrew was not designed to be "the original". Biblical Hebrew was re-aligned and adapted into MH. There were 3 changes
1. BH has 2 tenses - Imperfect and Perfect. While MH has 3 tenses - PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE.
2. BH uses V S O order
MH uses S V O order
That makes it comparable to other Semitic languages that also went a similar change.
3. MH has words for modern concepts like train, car, electricity, plug etc.
@@_blank-_you sound mad. Stop. Fascist? I think you are mistaken and must not know what fascist is.
I am a Jecke (German Jew) and although our community never spoke Yiddish (we spoke German & Hebrew), I can certainly see its deep cultural value to eastern Ashkenazim, however it was never going to be the language of Israel and quite frankly shouldn't. The native language of the Jewish people is Hebrew and it's the language that we all know, from Germany to Morocco or from Poland to Yemen, the Hebrew language and religion have been the two things to keep our nation united through two millennia of exile and diaspora, and so it was always bound to be the revived language of the revived state.
Revived state? More like Frankenstein's colony...
@@_blank-_ Anti-Zionism = antisemitism.
@@_blank-_
Go away, Na tzi
I admire Yiddish for the reasons Herzl disliked it. As a survivor's language, an underdog language. This reflects the popularity of underdog stories in American culture.
I do like the distinction of "Israeli" being a distinct language from Hebrew.
And Singer's comment of Yiddish never having been the language of rulers could be a good starting point for an alt history. How would a language that was never a top dog inform the social, political of moral culture of that fictional country. Would it even be called Israel?
[Another American trend is that immigrants, wanting to become Americans, learned English and the language of the old country became the secret language of grand parents. My son has decided, on his own, to learn Norwegian. Which wasn't used in our family for generations. Maybe there will be a similar revival for Yiddish. Although ive had friends tell me their grandparents felt Yiddish was derogatory and instead referred to the language as Jewish...]
I think this disdain towards Yiddish shows that Zionism is a form of self-hatred and rejection of 2000 years of history and diversity.
The secret language thing is 100% true. My grandparents spoke Yiddish so that their kids wouldn't know what they were saying. When my uncle learned German, he could understand them, so they just said everything in English.
Also, Yiddish literally means Jewish, so it's just a direct translation.
nice video but the volume is too quiet, you might want to mix it louder next time (viewer can always turn it down if it's too loud, but they can't increase volume past 100%)
I rely on the browser extension "SoundFixer" in Firefox : a life saver!
Maybe set it at eleven? Or just make ten louder?
The answer is 3 words long:-
because it's GERMAN
There you go.
Fr 😂
And? They had no problem accepting German money or copying German love for ethnic cleansing and wacky nationalism.
@_blank-_ which ethnic cleansing?
@@therealmaskriz5716 he believes in the Palestinian lie that Jews expelled Arabs, when it were the Arab league soldiers who told them to leave
@@therealmaskriz5716Palestinians.
Hebrew has to be the official language of Israel. It's... Israel. Sfardim don't speak Yiddish, but we all know Hebrew from our religion. However... most of the few members of my family who survived the camps/ghettos went to Eretz and were shocked how they were abused for speaking Yiddish even in their own homes. Nearly 2/3 left. My mother ADORED Israel, and became a citizen in 1949, but after being screamed at by a bus conductor for speaking Yiddish to her friend, she moved to Argentina. We remain Yiddish speakers to this day - my kids in the IDF refused to "de-Yiddish" their names (my oldest had to fight, but the younger 2 didn't, Israel IS changing for the better in that respect). It's criminal that they teach English and the language of... the others... instead of Yiddish and Ladino in the schools. The Jewish Nation should teach Jewish languages. It's definitely no longer a stigma to speak Yiddish in public in Eretz now, but the damage has been done. Allewaj, it'll work out. My daughter-in-law is a native Ladino speaker from Greece, SHE is the one worried - luckily in their K'svuveh it's stipulated they raise my grandkids speaking Yiddish and Ladino. My first grandkids have started coming, so I look forward to a happy polyglot family!
"It's criminal that they teach language of... the others..."
Seriously? Next time, try to hide your racism a little better. The "others" have a name: Palestinians. The fact that you despise Arabic and Palestinians so much shows that you only want the land, none of its inhabitants and would gladly murder all of them because they're not even worth communicating with. You installed your colony in the heart of the Arab world but can't be bothered to speak Arabic. The entitlement is through the roof.
Arabic is the only language that should be spoken in Palestine. Go back to Europe if you speak German or some other language made up in the 18 hundreds
The problem was if you would let everyone speak their mother tongue instead of trying to get everyone to speak the same language, you'd get a bunch of small communities with no cohesion.
It's a little ironic that you say it's "criminal" your children are taught English, yet you are only able to convey that thought to most people on this platform because you clearly have fluent English.
I never realised you used to live in Gateshead. I lived on Coatsworth Road yonks ago. Did you ever try the bagels from Stenhouse's shop?
And btw, is that a Northumberland flag in your logo?
I feel like you try to get rid of your accent but I like that I recognize your local accent so don't worry about your voice it's great!
I am from flanders and you're prob dutch but you maybe can do a video about charles the V in the german and dutch areas :)
Love your channel anyway
Well, I mean, Yiddish is a Germanic language. I reckon you'd want to run a mile away from anything Germanic-based when trying to rebuild your millennia-lost identity if you are a Jew after what happened in WW2.
Yeah, Zionists hated all things German so much that they decided to copy their shitty ethnic nationalism, their love for ethnic cleansing and their Lebensraum ideology. But at least, they spoke in Hebrew with a German accent while doing so.
@@_blank-_ Oh, shut up, Islamist apologist. You know, Muslims did the same.
Just a little correction: the correct word for “Greek” is Ελληνικά, not Ελληνική, which is an adjective (e.g. “Greek culture”) rather than the noun for the language :)
You lost me at "In 1949". I would edit the video as you are literally starting it with a mistake.
Renaming modern Hebrew "Israeli" is as absurd as renaming modern English "American" because of how much it differs from Shakespearean English. Also, the upgrade that Hebrew needed to be a modern language was almost entirely several hundred years of vocabuary, because Hebrew, although nobody's native language, was a living language of scholarship and jurisprudence in autonomous Jewish communities right up until emancipation.
Actually it was 1948, that Israel became a state, not 1949 on May 14th, 1948. If this was wrong, in the first line what else can we expect?
What the hell is that map in the thumbnail?
It's all the territories controlled by Israel de facto
Pretty sure it’s the map of territories controlled by Israel, rather then commonly recognized territories considered part of Israel
Hey Hilbert. Great video but I think there's a problem with your microphone, your voice sounds too quiet. I have a problem hearing you properly and I don't have similar problems on other RUclips videos.
As an argentinean christian, born and living in Buenos Aires, I remember some neighbours and jewish friends of my parents that the spoke many Yiddish. My parents spoke also German so we were used to listen Yiddish quiet often when we went shopping. Today you can still find some jewish families speaking with the older members of the family in yiddish
When my grandfather was on a artist exchange program in Germany he spoke only Yiddish as he didn't really know English or German he got along well he was mostly understood
0.00 it was 1948
also, the war had already begun in 1947, after the UN voted to create Israel
What is that thumbnail come on
It wasn't the best choice, but not particularly relevant to the topic.
Cry
@@Bunnyroo7 The topic is about Israel.
@@rubbezahl3762 Austrian painter would have been proud of you guys, you learned from him so well.
@@_blank-_says the guy in favour of ethic cleaning
You know i asked that very question in high school once. I didnt know about yiddish but i knew it was mostly german. So i asked "why do they speak hebrew and not german" since most of them came from germany "in my mind" and boy was mocked. But thank you for answering my question from long ago
As I have relatives from Amsterdam, I am not sure if the words I know from Yiddish (or Bargoens) came to me that way, or that they entered more generally into the Dutch language. Like mazzel, jat, porem, Mokum...
When I was 12, my mom decided to use Israel's "right of return law", cause my great grandmother was jewish, so we moved to Israel, so I was forced to learn Modern Hebrew. and while there I was also exposed to many other languages because of how diverse the population is. and I noticed while learning Modern Hebrew that a lot of the words for modern things were borrowed from other (mostly European) languages, and now because I'm proficient in both english and hebrew, I find myself understanding other languages to a certain extent, usually depending on the language, I'll either have a general sense of what's being said, by connecting the few words I understood, or sometimes I can understand most of what's being said, that I can almost completely translate it.
Colonizer
@@AbdullahAmarCope lol
@@AbdullahAmar Palestinians are actually just Egyptian and Syrian colonizers.
@@AbdullahAmarThe land has always changed demographically by different migration patters and so have most nations on earth. Hence, the word 'coloniser' has a very unclear meaning since you can always refer back from different points in history in which a group of people migrated to the land. Also, what makes one human migration more "just" than an other to the point where ethnic cleansing is supported? It cannot be denied that both Arabs and Jews migrated to the land as there are surveys documenting these migrations as of the 20th century. Hence, would you condition yourself to only allowing Arab migration to the land but not Jewish migration even though both groups were present on the land and it was not independent for 2011 years? Additionally, there is a whole independent Jewish state there now which has the right to control its migration and receive migrants like any other state in the world, so do not judge people migrating to Israel legally.
@@arielg.2681it's probably the genocide, just a thought though
Realistically Yiddish will survive moreso in the diaspora imo
Yep
Not so. The ultra religious Jews in Israel and elsewhere speak Yiddish as They see Hebrew as being the sacred language of prayer
Very interesting!
Fun fact: The oldest yiddish text we have is from the early 1300s and is a retelling of a germanic heroic legend also found in the Icelandic Eddas.
It's called the Dukus Horant.
Most Jews in Israel are not Ashkenazi, right?
They were at first, Zionism was first and foremost a European ideology for Ashkenazim. They could have decided to make Yiddish official but it would have probably made the colonial part too obvious.
@@_blank-_ Mad?
Yes, you are right.
Hebrew is a language, while yiddish is a (german) dialect, spoken by eastern european (poland, ukraine) and austrian jews. As a native german speaker (born in Berlin), I understand about 95% of what a yiddish speaker is saying. So to me a conversation with yiddish speaking jew from New York, is easier than a conversation with a german speaking a german dialect like frisian or bavarian or a german speaker from switzerland. Also, a lot of yiddish words and phrases are part of the local dialect in my hometown.
Yiddish is a language.
@@bradbradson4543 Then the Yiddish language must be very closely related to standard german and the local dialect in my area. The main difference is the written language, hebrew letters vs latin letters.
@@joebleibaum It's related, but it still has different words from Hebrew, Aramaic and the Slavic languages as well as some grammar differences and differences in pronunciation of certain words.
It’s because not every type of Jew knows Yiddish as its only for 1 type of jew
for some reason your voice is comming in real quiet, im using a headset with the volume on max
7:50 "Aliyah" is not the translation for "Right of Return" - it is the _act_ of immigrating to Israel (literally "ascending" to the Holy Land). The Right of Return is called "Z'khut ha-Shiva".
I’ve noticed that. Aliya means “going up”. People like myself do not like the terms aliya and yerida because they are judgmental. We are not going up or down. We are choosing a community to be a part of.
“Ascending” isn’t a good translation of it. “Colonising” would be a more fitting translation.
@@fodonogue3 That’s a valid point of view from a certain perspective, however a notion of a bunch of Moroccans, Yemenis, Ethiopians, Ukrainians, Polish, Lithuanians, Iraqis, South and even some North Americans etc “colonizing” what used to be a sparsely populated backwater of the ottoman empire is a bit stretching the definition of colonialism . 😀 Matter of fact another way of looking at us is as refugees. I in no way disregard the plight of the Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, but the conflict is a bit of a separate topic.
@@sergecashman5990 Ah, buying into the shitty zionist propaganda about how فلسطين was supposedly some “empty wasteland before the zionists came and saved it all and populated it”- bunch of bullshit. Just like you defending it.
Gee, I sure hope the comments are civil and respectful (popcorn anyone?🍿)
Yeah it's brutal, gimme some 😮🍿
@@pokemata1035 you want a drink and a hot dog with that?
@@justtheilluminativ282 Yeah sure mate
I would have thought there would have been some discussion of resistance from the much smaller but still significant population of Sephardic Jews who had no history of Yiddish but who had an analogous derived language of Ladino. My memory of the 70s and 80s is that the sephadim did not want to be overwhelmed culturally or linguistically by the Ashkenazi.
That said, I did very much enjoy your presentation. Thank you.
The line above the ב in עִבְרִית is so redundant that I can't look away from it whenever it's on screen. Why is it there? To denote it's V and not B? That's implied from the lack of a dot in the middle of the letter (בּ).
As to the subject of the video, there is a book named תרנגול כפרות (Scapegoat) about an immigrant kid coming to a kibbutz in the 1950s, and becoming Israeli, while his family stays unchanged due to lack of cultural exposure. I was never a fan of school-mandated books, but that book felt very real and grounded, cementing it in my memories. One of the things told in the book was that the kid, among his group of newcomers, was so deeply entrenched in the kibbutz work life that he adapted the quickest. Language seemed to differentiate him from the rest and from his family. He quickly switched to Hebrew while the stubborn useless ones didn't. There was a certain pride to speaking the language, which tainted any other.
As to why Yiddish wasn't the language, the answer is most likely that Israel isn't exclusively eastern European.
No for some reason he's used the Yiddish rendering of ivrit instead of the Hebrew rendering of it
@@tzvi7989 Google Translate says "Hebrew" in Yiddish is "העברעאיש"
@@lforlight it is but Hebrew diacritics show a vet as a ב whereas in Yiddish it's a בֿ
I hope that Yiddish makes a resurgence in the coming decades.
Why? Nothing against Yiddish, and there’s still a thriving subculture in Yiddish. But what would be the point of a resurgence? It’s about as useful as Latin.
@@MehWhatever99 As useful as Latin is a huge stretch. And what is there to lose in preserving a culture and its language? It feels like an intrinsic part of my identity and for it to be lost would be like losing a part of myself
Why is Israel's map shown incorrectly?
It’s Palestine 🇵🇸
Here is the answer from an Israeli.
Yiddish was already spoken but many came to Israeli not knowing Yiddish.
Hebrew was relearned , by scholars which were with the task of reinstating a language and improving it with actually instating language standards , and teaching a language… with the debate if to use German as an official language , which later had a debate if Yiddish is sounding German.
But if you understand practically , Yiddish was already known , and people fantasized those old texts they barely could read , and Hebrew was born
Feel sorry for ben-Yehuda's son, who was the first person to be raised with Modern Hebrew as his mother tongue. When he got to school, no-one could understand him.
Publishing a video about Israel in 2024 that's anything less than a categorical, complete, total, unwavering condemnation of its very existence is a courageous act, and I applaud you for it.
Seriously? You couldn’t use the legal map and gave Israel most of the Westbank and the Golan Heights?
thats reality dont get mad at it
The Arab world refuses peace so deal with it.
We all know it’s just occupied (for now) Palestine.
May i correct you in the Hebrew. It is not "ערביה יהודיה" wich mean a person who is Arab jew (for a woman), it is ערבית יהודית, wich mean the arab language of jews, like judeo arabic.
Exactly. The noun takes the construct form to make a compound noun just like cheesecake in Hebrew
My grandmother is a Yiddish speaker and we learned a lot when we were younger. My mother took me to Berlin when I was younger and the wall had come down to see west part of the city, since we had lived in Kyiv and could not travel there for a long time. I thought the whole country spoke a weird and complicated version of Yiddish (mind you, I was barely 6 and hadn’t been taught the ins and outs of the holocaust). I’m much older now and married a German and live in the USA, but when we go to Germany, I can understand a lot of German without any real formal training in the language. It’s not super easy, but with some thought it works. I’m excited to start learning German while refreshing my Yiddish
It’s not surprising because you’re Ukrainian … many fled to Ukraine from Poland … if you noticed it’s something that many Christian’s do fled , the same way… which proves my points that most of the times there is no Semitic deiffrences between the two
I believe the majority of Israelis (at least now) are not Ashkenazi.
I think it's like 30%
Jewish population of Israeli is racial and culturally diverse. I think that perhaps half are of native Middle Eastern descent. Probably 1/3 are of Ashkenazi Jews. The rest are Jews of Ethiopian, Indian, East Asian and other nationalities.
Speaking as an israeli, one of the biggest factors in rejecting yiddish in favor of hebrew was yiddish's association with the european diaspora which was despised by the Yishuv (the jewish migrants to Palestine, especially their younger generations) and scorned for their presumed cowardice and inability to stand for themselves throughout the long history of jewish prosecution in Europe (Holocaust was just a culmination of it). Since then it was quite common among the new generations of israelis born in Israel to consider the yiddish-speakers a sheeple that disgraced the entire jewish ethnos by quietly hobbling to the slaughterhouses without even a slightest attempt of resistance (no matter how hopeless or suicidal), and to call for their language (and in fact, entire culture) to be abandoned.
It is this relentless resolve to redeem the nation's reputation and obsolve it of the shame for its past impotence that drove the israelies into fierce battles of all the arab-israeli wars and let them win these wars decisively in a matter of days against massively superior enemy on multiple fronts.
Bulletpoint 6 on the list at the end, did you mean to say "inchoativity" as in forming the inchoative aspect?
Because it's not the language of Sephardic Jews, and because it's rooted in German.
Its German
It sounds very German
it's a Germanic language, like Dutch or English, but is not German outright
As someone who speaks Hebrew as a native language and is mediocre in German and hears a lot of Yiddish.
I can tell you It's basically: 45% Hebrew 45% German 10% Russian, Polish.
(And some Romanian, Hungarian, Lithunian and Ukrainian but it's dependent on the accent and orgin)
Cause Yiddish is basically german and was used exclusively by ashkenazi jews
And Ashkenazi Jews are the ones responsible for Zionism and Israel's creation.
Nice video and explains pretty well the situation but filled with inaccuracies. Major one is that Israel was founded in 1948 and not 1949.
It's no mystery: Hebrew has always been our national language . Jews never stopped speaking Hebrew in some capacity, never stopped praying in Hebrew, singing in Hebrew, composing poems in Hebrew, writing religious books in Hebrew, reading the Hebrew Bible, and dreaming of a sovereign Hebrew speaking kingdom (or state in modern terms) in our indigenous ancestral homeland.
To adopt Yiddish as a national language would not have been merely impractical for the many Jews who didn't speak it, but rather a betrayal of hundreds of generations, going back to our Hebrew speaking ancestors.
Yiddish was not the primary language of 12 million Jews in 1939. Many Jews in Europe were largely assimilated and if they spoke any Yiddish, it was their second or third language. Likewise, younger Jews in the United States and Russia respectively spoke English and Russian as their first language with the exception of some ultra-orthodox in Hasidic Jews in the United States. Many of these spoke Yiddish as a second language or understood some. Jews in Central Europe tended to be multilingual and quite a few members of my family spoke four or even five languages fluently enough for business purposes.
Of the roughly 10 million Jews in Europe in 1939, about 6 million were killed. Many of the remaining 4 million would move to Israel but not most and not overnight. Many also moved to other European countries or to the US, Canada, Australia, and South America. Because of this, I believe the US has the most number of Yiddish speakers. We have entire communities where ultra Orthodox and hacitic Jews speak Yiddish as their first language. However, Hebrew became the common language of Jews. The decision to have Hebrew as language of Israel was decided by Zionists relatively early on. Yiddish was just the language of Ashkenazi Jews, not all Jews. It's certainly wasn't the language of Jews living in the Middle East. Because of the decision to modernize and restore Hebrew, it became the language of Israel but also eventually the lingua franca among Jews. In fact, the pronunciation of Hebrew in Israel is not Ashkenazi for the most part but rather Mizrahi. Because of this influence, choose in America who are not ultra-orthodox or Hasidic now generally learn Hebrew with Israeli/Mizrahi pronunciation.
When I pray, I stand out as a unorthodox Jew who uses Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew.
I don't think Yiddish is going to die just because there are too many Orthodox Jews speaking it. But they're also non-orthodox Jews learning it. In fact my mother used to teach Yiddish largely to secular Jews in the 1970s at City college of New York. When I went to college, it was a language option at Columbia.
I'm far more concerned about other diaspora Jewish languages like Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish), Judaeo-Georgian, various forms of Judaeo-Arabic and Judaeo-Persian. Sadly, I suspect that Judaeo-Italic and Yavenic (Judaeo-Greek) will die out within my lifetime because most speakers were killed in the Holocaust and surviving speakers and those around the world assimilated.
Modern Hebrew is very Ashkenazi/Germanic in prononciation and syntax.
The Yiddish Book Center has a ton of interviews with people about Yiddish, Yiddishkeit, what Yiddish means to them, and so on. One group of interviews was with a Harvard professor of Yiddish, and one in specific was the state of Yiddish today. He said, “A lot better than 20 years ago believe it or not.” It has become somewhat cool and mysterious and attained a level cultural legitimacy it had lost after the war. In addition something like 10% of Haredim in the US choose to become more secular so there’s this constant influx into secular society of native Yiddish speakers.
@@ronmaximilian6953 Judeo-Georgian has got to be a long shot to make it. It has to be one of those languages that never had that many speakers to start with.
The ultra orthodox will never let Yiddish go. Don't worry about it.
You made no mention of Ladino speakers n Israel. Was it that insignificant during the aliyah? Just curious.
The map in thumbnail 💀
i aways wondered why the jews decided to name themselves israel and bot judea...
There were two Jewish kingdoms, one was Israel the other was judea.
The kingdom of Judea lasted longer and gave us the name "jews" but the kingdom of Israel was larger and the name is much older
I don't know about everyone but specifically in the Caucasus mountains until ~100 years ago(with the Soviet meddling),Jews in the Caucasus(Juhuro),rarely used the word "Jew" to describe the people(not anti or anything they just didn't use it much),"Sons of Israel"(Banei Israel)or Israeli more acceptable(this is why there are many theories against Juhuro Jews that we are not Jews but Northern Israelis or something,this is wrong we are Jews just didn't used it),also there are Israelis who are not Jews(Samaritans).Israel is bigger(from Dan to Beersheva) where most people in Israel are now living with more prestige, Judea is hills,Desert and Jerusalem,maybe also secular vs religious, there are probably many reasons.
@@12zxgglol Actually you're thinking of Judah which was the Southern Kingdom (same idea though).
The term Judea actually is just the name of the region that was given to it by the Latin speaking Romans.
Because almost half of the citizens of the country would be Arabic, calling it Judea would imply it's a Jewish only state, Israel has no such double meaning and only refers to a nationality.
Arabs can be Israeli.
@@Carlos-fc4xzNo, calling it „state of Israel“ is also implying that it is a completely jewish state.
The name comes from „Eretz Yisrail“ (Land of Israel), the HEBREW term for parts of that region.
Also, their anthem, official language, flag, names, signs, symbols, ensignias etc. are all jewish.
Interesting video. Another interesting and closely related aspect is the drive for many Israeli jews to adopt traditional Hebrew names, obscuring their European ancestry in the pursuit of a national identity
Do you have an example?
@@MrEVAQ for example Benjamin Netanyahu's father changed their family name from the Polish 'Mileikowsky' when they moved to Palestine. It's quite a widespread practise
@@carmonandy Netanyahu is not a traditional Mizrahi name
@@MrEVAQ Hebrew is more accurate, I've edited my comment to reflect this. The point I made still stands. European Jews commonly adopt Hebrew names to further a unified Israeli identity
@@carmonandy True
It should be noted that prior to it's revival, in addition to religious uses, Hebrew was also used as a lingua franca between Jewish communities that spoke different languages, particularly as a trade language.
I'm quite surprised the comment section didn't explode with the map you used in the thumbnail. Your next video is about the Ukrainian language? Mmm... I can't wait to see your map of Ukraine.
More seriously, dude, as guy who post videos on history, you seem to be quite ignorant about the situation in the middle east. Did you take the first map you found? And what are the blue areas in the middle? I hope this is not supposed to be a Palestinian micro-state, because that would be even more extremist that I thought!
To give you a quick recap', only an Israeli far-right nationalist would consider all these areas (Golan heights, West bank, Gaza - thank god the map is too small to show East Jerusalem) part of Israel.
I hope you will be more careful next time.
The map is supposed to show Israeli settlement land, and if you can actually read, it quite clearly says "why don't Israelis speak Yiddish?" in the thumbnail, represented by the map that shows Israeli settlement
@chlorhexidine2506 then why does it include Gaza? Eitherway settlements don't make Palestinian Territory part of Isreal
@@MadameCorgi it doesn't include Gaza, I think you didn't look closely enough