The Future of Yiddish -- in English: Field Notes from the New Ashkenaz

Abstract

The Future of Yiddish—in English:Field Notes from the New Ashkenaz Dara Horn (bio) Last year, I came across an article by Janet Hadda in Pakn Treger, the journal of the National Yiddish Book Center, entitled "Imagining Yiddish: A Future for the Soul of Ashkenaz."1 The article, more memoir than scholarly treatise, discussed her so-called defection from the ranks of secular Yiddish supporters, which began when she publicly expressed her belief that Yiddish as a living language has no real future. The ire raised by this idea in certain circles made her think hard about where and how she saw the future of Yiddish, and she reached a conclusion both astonishing and inspiring. In the course of her essay, Hadda discusses several of the purported heirs to the legacy of Yiddish culture. First, she addresses Haredi communities, where Yiddish surely has its most obvious future as a spoken language. But she knows that the lack of interest in imaginative literature in these communities, along with their establishment of themselves explicitly against the possibility of reinventing tradition, makes these communities precisely antithetical to the very aspects of Eastern European Yiddish culture that tend to matter most to those who wish to revive or remember it. Then she addresses the world of what she calls "neo-Ashkenaz"—secular and sometimes non-Jewish Yiddish enthusiasts who often treat the Yiddish legacy as either a hobby or a crusade. Hadda sees this cohort as largely in denial of Yiddish's obvious decline, and she finds it difficult to envision any prospects for a movement whose energies are devoted more to a resurrection of the past than to a natural development for the future. The true inheritors of Ashkenaz, Hadda ultimately claims, are today's young American Jewish writers, who are writing in English while embracing the same themes and ideas that modern Yiddish writers once [End Page 471] stirred to life. Speaking of these writers, she writes: "Their existence is a comfort, a nekhome, not to be demeaned or denied, but to be heralded, cherished, and admired. Through their work, the culture—and with it, the soul—of Ashkenaz, of Jewish Eastern Europe, will continue to breathe fire and light."2 As both a fledgling Yiddish scholar and a young American Jewish novelist, I read Hadda's article many, many times. Sometimes I read it and felt ennobled; more often, I felt like Tevye, crying out "Katoynti!" and groveling before Sholem Aleichem, the real artist, before demanding his half of the royalties. After all, are today's American Jewish authors worthy of becoming a link in the golden chain of Yiddish literature? How could we ever be, without even a language to call our own? It has been said in Yiddish that shoulders are from God, and burdens too. But isn't it unfair to burden American Jewish writers with the weight of these giants of the past? Or is it generous to allow these writers an opportunity to stand on the giants' shoulders? Who has clean enough hands and a pure enough heart to take hold of the goldene keyt? I will leave to others the question of the future of Yiddish af Yidish, of where the thousand-year-old language of Ashkenazi Jews is headed, if anywhere, and why. I do not yet feel prepared to dissect the arguments Hadda has so eloquently made for American writers in English as the heirs to this tradition. Instead, I will use her conclusion as my starting point—because the implications of her idea are so startling, humbling, and perhaps even inspiring—by offering you a few of my own personal field notes from this world of Yiddish-in-English, of this new Ashkenaz: where it came from, where it is now, and where it might be going. My first novel emerged out of jealousy. As I began my graduate studies, I immersed myself in Hebrew and Yiddish literature and soon found myself incredibly envious of the writers I was studying. I didn't envy them the old-world Eastern European setting that enchants so many people today—I had read too many Haskalah writers for that. What I envied of these...