Chemical Literature in Yiddish: A Bridge between the Shtetl and the Secular World

Abstract

A confluence of circumstances—few opportunities for Russian Jews to attend higher education, nearly universal use of Yiddish among Eastern European Jews, an influx of household technology based on new chemistry, and the beckoning of Enlightenment education—promoted the use of Yiddish to describe scientific matters. Among the scientific topics explained for Yiddish readers was chemistry, as part of the goal of exposing secular Jews unable to get a formal education to modern science and technology, and—ultimately—of introducing Yiddish speakers to secular philosophy and knowledge. Thus scientific Yiddish flowered in the early twentieth century and was used as a lively means for communicating scientific knowledge and values via chemistry in various formats—for serious students, but especially for the self-taught and interested laypersons. This literature included textbooks, essays for nonscientists, glossaries for academic and home use, government propaganda, teacher's guides, and journalistic discussions of the history and politics of chemical matters. Only original research was absent from the Yiddish chemical literature.