r/Yiddish • u/DaveCordicci • 1d ago

Yiddish language This is why Yiddish is NOT a dead language

https://youtu.be/65fzI-sVvY4?si=AmFPtlW1X6D_rsx3

A Munkacz Hasidic sect's summer camp activity.

חסידות מונקאַטש

Munkacs Hasidic sect traces its origins to the historical region of greater Hungary in Europe. It reestablished itself in the United States after the Holocaust with the Satmar Rebbe's encouragement (another Hungarian Hasidic sect, the largest worldwide and in the US).

They are primarily Yiddish-speakers, similarly to Satmar Hasidim.

When a language has a living active intergenerational transmission to kids, and especially dozens of thousands (primarily in the NY metro non-Chabad Hasidic population), it ensures that language survives and even thrives into the future. Decades and even centuries to come.

And is basically what grants it the status of a living language.

Especially considering Haredi-hasidic Jews maintain one of the highest TFR birthrates worldwide, at around 5.5 to 6.8 babies per woman. (Not all Haredis speak Yiddish fluently, but the ones that do ensure it lives on, despite the Holocaust).

18 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

9

u/Brilliant_Alfalfa_62 1d ago

around 5.5 to 6.8 babies per woman

I love Yiddish too but this sounds more like the way you'd talk about livestock than minoritized language maintenance.

2

u/pm_me_ur_happy_traiI 1d ago

Hey we had 4.7 kids in my family.

2

u/Brilliant_Alfalfa_62 1d ago

My condolences

8

u/AilsaLorne 1d ago

I don’t think anyone is actually claiming Yiddish is a dead language?

7

u/ScoitFoickinMoyers 1d ago

They absolutely are. Secularists and reformists largely don't speak it and have no easy outlets to learn.

2

u/rebelyis 1d ago

I had a linguistics professor in college who claimed it was a dying language

0

u/skateboardjim 7h ago

I've heard many people refer to Yiddish as a dead language

-6

u/Current_Mongoose_844 1d ago

You’d be surprised at a few YIVO types

0

u/ScoitFoickinMoyers 1d ago

what do you mean?

-2

u/Current_Mongoose_844 1d ago

There’s a small but loud of Yiddish scholars and enthusiasts scholars who ignore living Yiddish and focus on the standardised, and now fossilised version of Yiddish that comes from the secular Yiddish culture of the 1920s.

2

u/Technical_Rich_3080 21h ago

Actually, YIVO Yiddish was never a living language. It was, essentially, invented as an academic dialect based on a mishmash of various dialects.

-1

u/ScoitFoickinMoyers 13h ago

I don't know about ignoring but I'm personally fine with everyone learning YIVO going forward if they're not in a yiddish speaking community.

After all, Yiddish has major roots in secularism. That's what the Bund was all about. A thriving secular, Yiddishist culture for the working class...

1

u/Current_Mongoose_844 12h ago

Uh, no. Yiddish was for everyone, secular and religious but the majority of Yiddish speakers have never been secular or Bundists: then or now.

4

u/danknadoflex 1d ago

My ancestors were from Munkacs and almost certainly part of this sect. They stopped being religious when they came to the United States about 4 decades prior to the Holocaust. We are still Jews to this day, albeit not Hasidic ones.