Yiddish as an Expression of Jewish Cultural Identity in Galicia and Vienna

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the backwardness of Yiddish in the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire. In Galicia, Yiddish language and culture developed quite differently and at a much slower pace than in the other parts of Poland and Russia. At a time when the works of Isaac Leib Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim, and Sholem Aleichem were flourishing elsewhere, Yiddish culture in Galicia was still underdeveloped, emerging only fleetingly at the beginning of the twentieth century, inspired by the political and social movements that encouraged Jewish national self-awareness. No doubt one reason for this long period of dormancy was the particular historical situation that resulted from the policies of the Habsburg regime. Thus, a history of the Yiddish-language movement in Galicia and the Austrian capital, Vienna, must also be an account of its failure. The chapter shows that it was precisely in Galicia that a thriving cultural symbiosis emerged among the coexisting national groups, and this symbiosis had a substantial impact on the Yiddish cultural movement. Yet competition from the Polish and German languages ultimately ousted Yiddish almost completely.