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Yiddish language socialization across communities: Religion, ideologies, and variation
Language & Communication 42 (2015) 135–140
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Yiddish language socialization across communities: Religion, ideologies, and variation Netta Avineri* Monterey Institute of International Studies, A Graduate School of Middlebury College, TESOL/TFL Program, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Available online 29 December 2014
This review article analyzes key themes and trends in recent research on Yiddish language socialization. It considers the use of Yiddish within a multilingual repertoire across communities, highlighting the positive contributions of ethnographic literature in particular. Specifically, it demonstrates how degree of religious affiliation and language contact in diverse communities can play a role in Yiddish language use. The article also examines the central role of language ideologies and language learning motivations among those who learn, learn about, and/or use Yiddish. The discussion illuminates individuals’ and groups’ cross-cutting identities, hybrid forms of language, and creativity in language use across contexts. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Language ideologies Language socialization Judaism Religious affiliation Variation Yiddish
Di tsung iz di feder fun hartsn. The tongue is the pen of the heart. [Yiddish proverb] 1. Introduction This special issue focuses on the multiple ways that elements of ethnic, cultural, religious, and regional identity are connected to language use patterns in diverse contexts. Yiddish, as a Jewish language in the contemporary world, provides a compelling case study of cross-cutting cultural and religious ideologies, as seen through language socialization and language practices of various communities. Language socialization research (Duranti et al., 2012; Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez, 2002; Ochs and Schieffelin, 1984; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986) has focused on “socialization to use language and socialization through the use of language” (Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986, 163). Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) emphasize, the process of acquiring language is deeply affected by the process of becoming a competent member of a society [and] the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized to a large extent through language, by acquiring knowledge of its functions, social distribution, and interpretations in and across socially defined situations, i.e., through exchanges of language in particular social situations. (p. 264) Over time, Jews have spoken in ways that are distinct from their non-Jewish neighbors (Peltz, 2010). Jewish languages have more recently been considered “a distinctively Jewish repertoire rather than a separate system” (Benor, 2008, p. 1062). And a * 227 McCone Building, 460 Pierce Street, Monterey, CA 93940, United States. Tel.: þ1 831 647 6560. E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2014.12.006 0271-5309/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Jewish religiolect is “a spoken and/or written variety employed by the Jewish population of a specific area, although it later may extend to other communities and areas as well” (Hary and Wein, 2013, p. 88). Like other religiolects, Yiddish and its use can also be analyzed for their relationships to communities along the religious-secular spectrum. Yiddish (meaning “Jewish” in Yiddish), spoken primarily by Ashkenazic (Western, Central, and Eastern European) Jews, originated in the 11th century in the middle Rhine area (Fishman, 1991, p. 81). It arose as a result of contact between Jews’ L1 (which many believe was Aramaic) and German, and continued to develop as Jews settled in different areas across the globe. Yiddish has moved with Jews to areas around the world, including Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, North and South America, and Israel. As a result, the Yiddish language itself has incorporated both lexical and grammatical aspects of a variety of languages from these regions. Davis (1987, p. 159) notes, “the Yiddish of Eastern Europe has a basic Germanic structure, and predominantly Germanic vocabulary with a high input of Slavic and Hebrew and Aramaic words and is written in the Hebrew script”. Due to a variety of events during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the number of Yiddish speakers within nonOrthodox Jewish communities has greatly diminished. These events include the Holocaust, during which six million Jews perished (it is estimated that approximately five million of these were Yiddish speakers (Lipphardt, 2011); the migration to and partial assimilation of large numbers of Jews in the United States, Israel, South America, and other countries; and the state of Israel’s choice of Hebrew over Yiddish or other Jewish languages as the official language of the nation. However, within some Orthodox Hasidic communities the number of speakers is in fact growing (Assouline, 2010; Barriere, 2010). The contemporary picture of Yiddish language socialization is therefore a multifaceted one, necessitating detailed examination of language ideologies and practices across contexts. 2. Yiddish as part of a multilingual repertoire: recent research A number of recent books and dissertations have treated the complexity of Yiddish as part of a repertoire of languages in the contemporary age, including Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Benor, 2013), Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture (Rabinovitch et al., 2013), Heritage language socialization practices in secular Yiddish educational contexts: The creation of a metalinguistic community (Avineri, 2012), and Twenty-First Century Yiddishism (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). These all build on previous seminal work on the topic, including the in-depth ethnography Mitzvah Girls (Fader, 2009) that focused on language socialization among Orthodox Hasidic teenage girls in Brooklyn, and Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language & Culture (Shandler, 2008) that considers the cultural and linguistic purposes to which Yiddish is put by Jews and non-Jews alike. He highlights Yiddish as a “postvernacular” language, defined by the following: “in semiotic terms, the language’s primary level of signification – that is, its instrumental value as a vehicle for communicating information, opinions, feelings, ideas – is narrowing in scope. At the same time its secondary, or meta-level of signification – the symbolic value invested in the language apart from the semantic value of any given utterance in it – is expanding” (Shandler, 2008, p. 4). These works explore in depth some of the crucial features that can shape language use, including region, degree of religious observance, and language attitudes and ideologies, which are discussed in detail in the articles in this issue. All of this contemporary research on Yiddish language ideologies and practices highlight the centrality of the following social features: 1) degree of religious affiliation and language contact in diverse communities and 2) language ideologies and language learning motivations. These books employ a wide range of methodologies, including written sources from a variety of contexts and time periods, surveys/questionnaires, interviews, and ethnographic participant-observation. Across all of these studies, it becomes evident that detailed ethnographic and discourse analysis provide a deep perspective on language socialization, language ideologies, and diverse practices across communities (cf. Fader, 2009; Benor, 2012; Avineri, 2012). These methods can allow readers to grasp how different groups negotiate the complexities of use and/or talk about Yiddish among a constellation of other languages. Written sources, including literature, dictionaries, and media, can be analyzed using content analysis and other analytical forms to provide a complement to more interaction-based analyses (cf., Soldat-Jaffe, 2012; Rabinovitch et al., 2013). Ethnographic interaction-based methods, along with large-scale surveys, can provide a profound view of groups’ language ideologies and use. Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Benor, 2012) discusses the second language socialization processes of non-Orthodox Jews who become religious later in life, and the ways they demonstrate their emerging identities through diverse linguistic features, practices, affiliations, and ideologies. Heritage language socialization practices in secular Yiddish educational contexts: The creation of a metalinguistic community (Avineri, 2012) takes an ethnographic approach to analyzing Yiddish classrooms, cultural events, and festivals to develop a theoretical and empirical framework for the model of “metalinguistic community”, a community of positioned social actors engaged primarily in discourse about language and cultural symbols tied to language. Twenty-First Century Yiddishism (2012), by Tatjana SoldatJaffe, provides a historical and contemporary perspective on the complex set of changing language ideologies related to Yiddish pedagogy and use since the beginning of the twentieth century. Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture (Rabinovitch et al., 2013) is an edited volume that considers the variety of novel approaches to Yiddish in the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, including music, literature, and other forms of language use. 3. Degree of religious affiliation & language contact in diverse communities In reviewing current research on Yiddish, it becomes evident that degree of communal religious affiliation can have a heavy influence on sociophonetic choices: language is used distinctively by those along a spectrum of religious observance
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(even those under the same religious ‘title’, e.g., “Jewish”). As Avineri (2012, p. 31) notes, “the integral nature of religious symbols and practices in the history of Yiddish and its speakers.reveals the complexities of discrete categories like ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ as they apply both to communities and to languages themselves”. She describes the primarily secular attachments to Yiddish-speaking culture among “metalinguistic community” members who use Yiddish in circumscribed (and primarily public) interactional spaces. This range of “social, cultural, and religious distinctions” (p. 13) is also highlighted in Benor’s (2012) discussion of new members of Orthodox communities. Yiddish must always be considered as one language within a multilingual repertoire. The languages Yiddish is in contact with can depend heavily on country (e.g., United States, Germany, Israel), region (e.g., New York, Philadelphia, California), and religious affiliation (Orthodox, secular). It is considered an especially striking example of a contact language: “While presumably every language has in some way been influenced by some other languages, Yiddish ‘wears its history on its sleeve’, so to speak, and lends itself remarkably well to studies of contact effects” (Prince, 2001, p. 263). And this contact can manifest itself for example as code-switching, code-mixing, and/or borrowing. The studies discussed here provide evidence for how Yiddish and English (among other languages) can become intertwined across settings, by those with varying degrees of religious observance. Among secular communities, the “postvernacular” nature of Yiddish is evidenced by its study in academic contexts, token usage in festivals, and appearance on various objects and artifacts (Shandler, 2008). And musical engagement with Yiddish among “neo-klezmorim” (an ethnography of new klezmer musicians): includes the use of storytelling to evoke worlds to which many nonreligious audience members have little to no access (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). These musicians engage for example in a common practice shared with other ‘folk’ musicians, using talk between songs as pedagogical opportunities for ethnographic initiation of the listeners. The implicit teaching of Yiddish through song, to nonreligious communities, can also be found in Yiddish samples in the hip-hop of Canada-based artist DJ SoCalled (Smulyan, 2013). And there is a range of uses for Yiddish words in English among American Jews of varying levels of religious observance, as evidenced by in-depth analysis of surveys (Benor, 2011, 2013; Benor and Cohen, 2011) and other methods (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). The most striking characteristics that correlated with Yiddishisms in English among young American Jews were childhood Jewish education, Jewish socialization experiences during early adulthood, having Jewishly engaged friends, synagogue attendance and participation in a minyan, Shabbat observance, Orthodox identification, and Yiddish ancestry (Benor, 2013).1 Among “metalinguistic community” members who use Yiddish in circumscribed (and primarily public) interactional spaces, one finds primarily secular attachments to Yiddish-speaking culture (Avineri, 2012, 2014a) The study highlights the range of secular and religious commitments held by individuals who choose to learn and learn about Yiddish in the evenings and on the weekends but do not use the language as part of their daily lives. All of this research offers a variety of examples of the ways that Yiddish is used, questioned, and re-created in contemporary nonreligious United States contexts. Adults who are newly socialized into Orthodox Jewish communities utilize a distinctive English language variety in some cases imbued with religious references across diverse public and private contexts (Benor, 2012). These ba’alei teshuva (“BT’s”), literally ‘those who return’, with no linguistic background in Yiddish, will infuse their English with Yiddish lexical items as referee-designed evidence of their commitment; some of these are related to religious observance while others are not. In Orthodox communities in particular, gender ideologies are central to language practices as well. Hasidic Jewish girls are unique in their ability to move between secular and religious worlds as evidenced by code-switching and code-mixing among Yiddish, English, and Hebrew (Fader, 2009). For boys, Yiddish is a “medium of instruction and loshn-koydesh ‘holy language’ [Hebrew] is used for study and prayer” (Fader, 2009, as discussed in Avineri, 2014a). Young ultra-Orthodox girls’ ideologies and practices in Israel include high levels of proficiency and positive language attitudes toward Yiddish, in contrast to negative attitudes toward Hebrew (Tannenbaum and Abugov, 2010). Israeli ultra-Orthodox women heavily use Hebrew in Yiddish sermons (Assouline, 2014), while Yiddish is used in Orthodox women’s songs among a constellation of languages depending on one’s generation and region (Vaisman, 2013). Home-based Jewish education, as evidenced by a discussion of five books used in the Yiddish-speaking ultra-Orthodox community of di erlikhe Yidn (the “honest/virtuous/observant Jews”) in Great Britain reveals that “in its ideological authority.Yiddish is taught as what I will call the linguistic what should be. Because it is always prescriptive and ideal in its application, the what should be function is more resistant and durable, whereas the what is is most vulnerable to outside forces .” (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012, p. 54). What is described here is a prescriptivist ideology of language use, one that is antithetical to sociolinguistic empiricist ideology. As a whole, these studies provide convincing evidence for how Yiddish, English, and Hebrew (among other languages) can become intertwined across settings, by those with varying degrees of religious observance. And the languages to which one has access differ based on a range of cultural, social, and linguistic features. 4. Language ideologies and language learning motivations Language ideologies, a “mediating link between social structures and forms of talk” (Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994, p. 55) are central to sociolinguistic analysis, since they are intimately connected with actual language variation and choice. Spitulnik (1998, p. 164) notes, “language ideologies and processes of language valuation are never just about language (Kulick, 1998;
1 This survey did not account for the effect of region or heritage region, which may have also played a role in language use among the populations surveyed.
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Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994, pp. 55–56). Language ideologies are, among many other things, about the construction and legitimation of power, the production of social relations of sameness and difference, and the creation of cultural stereotypes about types of speakers and social groups”. This focus on ideologies and the ways that they can shape language use is of course relevant not only to Yiddish but to all languages (cf. Gal, 1998; Giddens, 1984; Irvine and Gal, 2000; Kroskrity, 2004; Kulick, 1998; Schieffelin and Doucet, 1998; Schieffelin et al., 1998; Spitulnik, 1998; Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994). Diverse motivations for engaging in Yiddish language socialization exist in the range of communities described above, and are intimately connected to individuals’ ideologies about the language. In any discussion of Yiddish, the question of its vitality and endangerment is central. A number of scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and language documentation have considered issues of language death, endangerment, and revitalization (cf. Abley, 2003; Bradley and Bradley, 2002; Crystal, 2000; Dalby, 2003; Dorian, 1989; Duchene and Heller, 2008; Evans, 2010; Grenoble and Whaley, 2006; Hagege, 2009; Harrison, 2007; Harrison et al., 2008; Krauss, 2007; Nettle and Romaine, 2000; Robins and Uhlenbeck, 1991; Wurm, 1991). In many ultra-Orthodox communities the language is taught to children as part of a repertoire of daily languages, and is available in educational, health-related, community-based, and work contexts (cf. Fader, 2009). For secular Yiddish metalinguistic community members, Yiddish endangerment is a phenomenological reality and a discursive strategy (Avineri, 2014b). German non-heritage learners seek to reclaim a language and culture destroyed by their ancestors (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). These ideologies of language vitality and endangerment are especially relevant to how the language is used in conjunction with other codes across diverse communities. Those engaged in “postvernacular” (Shandler, 2008) Yiddish are primarily motivated by a desire to connect with others through nostalgia. Throughout the last century, “contemporary metalinguistic communities that focus on Yiddish have shifted to include an ever-widening group of speakers, semi-speakers, non-speakers, Jews, and non-Jews engaging in a diverse range of practices” (Avineri, 2012, p. 74). The central focus in metalinguistic communities is “nostalgia socialization, a public attention to and affective appreciation of the past as a way to understand one’s place in the present” (Avineri, 2012, p. 2). Individuals frequently exhibit an intergenerational motivation focused primarily on connecting with previous and current generations, but not one focused passing down the language to future generations. This intergenerational motivation manifests itself in different ways depending on an individual’s age. Older adult learners in the study see Yiddish as a hobby to be learned during one’s retirement; middle-aged learners see it as an affect-laden symbol that must be saved; and younger learners see it as a tool for study of history and previous generations. These ideologies and associated motivations became evident through interviews and interactions in classrooms and cultural events. Yiddishism, “the complex blend of prescriptive and descriptive discourse about Yiddish linguistic identity” (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012, p. 13) is a language ideology, one focused on a ‘diaspora nationalism’ (a concept recently discussed in detail in the 2012 book Jews & Diaspora Nationalism, edited by Simon Rabinovitch). The dual ‘prescriptive/descriptive’ nature of Yiddishism’s “tangle of competing ideologies” (p. 40), along with the ‘co-implication’ of Yiddishism and Hebraism, are useful to highlight in relation to individuals’ and groups’ motivation to use (or not use) Yiddish in the contemporary world. Newly Orthodox speakers (or ‘BT’s) engaged in socialization into Orthodox communities learn Yiddish among a repertoire of languages; Benor (2012, p. 28) notes, “It is clear that there is no single way of being a BT; differences in ideology lead to differences in behavior, including how they speak”. Language learning motivations in this group are therefore part of a broader project of integration, acceptance, and emerging identities in new communities. This can result in diverse practices including “hyperaccommodation and deliberate distinctiveness” (Benor, 2012, p. 3) as well as a “bungee effect”, in which these speakers “at first.go overboard in their use of Orthodox practices, and then they bounce back to a more comfortable level” (Benor, 2012, p. 28), suggesting that Yiddish loan words form a part of such practices. Among community members who used to be Orthodox but no longer identify as such (“Off the Derech” – “Off the Path”), complex uses of language on Facebook include religious references in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English (Nove, 2013). These unique modes of using language demonstrate diverse motivations, stances toward current communities, and nostalgia for a way of life they no longer associate with. Among both newly Orthodox (BT) and previously Orthodox (OTD) communities of practice therefore, language use displays ideologies and motivations that demonstrate the group(s) one is a part of, was a part of, want to be a part of, and do not want to be a part of. Non-Jewish German learners of Yiddish, discussed by Soldat-Jaffe (2012), provide an interesting and novel perspective on language learning motivations as related to Yiddish that connects to the previous section’s discussion of region and language use (both heritage and present home of language users). In questionnaires, these students frequently focus on the outgroup status of Yiddish speakers of previous generations, and are interested in honoring the voices of those who died in the Holocaust, both in Germany and throughout neighboring areas. Connecting language attitudes and language choices, these students conceptualize their engagement in Yiddish language learning as a way to create a “Yiddishland” in Germany, though the vast majority has no ‘heritage’ tie to the language. This contrasts with Assouline’s article (in this issue) on New Square users of Yiddish who do have such ties. Their heritage Yiddish is from one dialect area, but their contemporary usage of Loshnkoydesh (‘the holy tongue’) [Hebrew loanwords] in liturgical situations (e.g., lessons or sermons) reflects a historically-based ‘referee designed’ (Bell, 2001) convergence on features of the rebbe’s dialect. The native German speakers do have ‘linguistic heritage’, as they are able to depend on their L1 during their engagement with Yiddish in the present. This may encourage them to continue engagement with the language, despite their lack of a ‘heritage’ or cultural connection. Discourse analysis of classroom interactions (cf. Avineri, 2012) highlights the various stances toward the languages students already know when they begin engaging with Yiddish. For example, in many U.S. educational contexts, German is frequently constructed as a ‘rival’ to Yiddish language learning while previous Hebrew language learning is many times portrayed as a ‘resource’.
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This range of research highlights the centrality of language ideologies to choices related to engaging with Yiddish in the contemporary world. As the books discussed here demonstrate, individuals and groups all over the world have a variety of motivations for learning Yiddish. And their actual language use demonstrates an adherence to these diverse ideologies, in terms of incorporating the language into their repertoire of languages. 5. Conclusion This review of current literature on Yiddish language socialization and use highlights a number of relevant issues central to language variation. First of all, individuals’ and groups’ cross-cutting identities (religious, cultural, regional (both heritage and present), age-based, gender-based) are constantly shifting and emerging, and language ideologies and use both reflect and create this ongoing variation. Second, the wide range of uses to which Yiddish is put emphasizes that sociolinguistic inquiry should continue to question what counts as a language. Hybrid forms of language (code-mixing, code-switching, borrowing), and their associated ideologies, become indexical of one’s identification with certain groups and disaffiliation from others. Lastly, the one constant across all of this diversity is that individuals and groups are incredibly creative in the variety of ways they can conceptualize and engage with language. The languages one uses are therefore intimately connected with one’s thoughts and feelings (our ‘hearts’) and those of one’s communities. References Abley, M., 2003. Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Assouline, D., 2010. Verbs of Hebrew origin in Israeli Haredi Yiddish. In: Ben Shahar, R., Toury, G., Ben-Ari, N. (Eds.), Hebrew: a Living Language [“Ha-ivrit safa haya”] V. 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Ochs, E., Schieffelin, B.B., 1984. Language acquisition and socialization: three developmental stories and their implications. In: Shweder, R.A., LeVine, R.A. (Eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 276–320. Peltz, R., 2010. Diasporic languages: the Jewish world. In: Fishman, J.A., Garcia, O. (Eds.), Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 135–152. Prince, E., 2001. Yiddish as a contact language. In: Smith, N., Veenstra, T. (Eds.), Creolization and Contact. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp. 263–290. Rabinovitch, L., Goren, S., Pressman, H.S. (Eds.), 2013. Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture. Wayne State University Press, Detroit. Rabinovitch, S. (Ed.), 2012. Jews & Diaspora Nationalism: Writings on Jewish Peoplehood in Europe & the United States. Brandeis University Press, Waltham. Robins, R.H., Uhlenbeck, E.M., 1991. Endangered Languages. Berg Publishers Limited, Oxford. Schieffelin, B.B., Doucet, R.C., 1998. The “real” Haitian Creole: Ideology, metalinguistics, and orthographic choice. In: Schieffelin, B.B., Woolard, K.A., Kroskrity, P.V. (Eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 285–316. Schieffelin, B.B., Ochs, E., 1986. Language socialization. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 15, 163–191. Schieffelin, B.B., Woolard, K.A., Kroskrity, P.V. (Eds.), 1998. Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. Oxford University Press, New York. Shandler, J., 2008. Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language & Culture. University of California Press, Berkeley. Smulyan, S.E., 2013. The SoCalled past: sampling Yiddish in hip-hop. In: Rabinovitch, L., Goren, S., Pressman, H.S. (Eds.), Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture. Wayne Street University Press, Detroit. Soldat-Jaffe, T., 2012. Twenty-first Century Yiddishism: Language, Identity, and the New Jewish Studies. Sussex Academic Press, Brighton. Spitulnik, D., 1998. Mediating unity and diversity: the production of language ideologies in Zambian broadcasting. In: Schieffelin, B.B., Woolard, K.A., Kroskrity, P.V. (Eds.), Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 163–188. Tannenbaum, M., Abugov, N., 2010. The legacy of the linguistic fence: linguistic patterns among ultra-orthodox Jewish girls. Herit. Lang. J. 7. Vaisman, E., 2013. “Hold on Tightly to Tradition”: Generational Differences in Yiddish Song Repertoires among Contemporary Hasidic Women. In: Rabinovitch, L., Goren, S., Pressman, H.S. (Eds.), 2013. Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture. Wayne State University Press, Detroit. Woolard, K.A., Schieffelin, B.B., 1994. Language ideology. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 23, 55–82. Wurm, S.A., 1991. Language death and disappearance: causes and circumstances. In: Robins, R.H., Uhlenbeck, E.M. (Eds.), Endangered Languages. Berg Publishers Limited, Oxford, pp. 1–18.
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Language & Communication journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langcom
Yiddish language socialization across communities: Religion, ideologies, and variation Netta Avineri* Monterey Institute of International Studies, A Graduate School of Middlebury College, TESOL/TFL Program, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Available online 29 December 2014
This review article analyzes key themes and trends in recent research on Yiddish language socialization. It considers the use of Yiddish within a multilingual repertoire across communities, highlighting the positive contributions of ethnographic literature in particular. Specifically, it demonstrates how degree of religious affiliation and language contact in diverse communities can play a role in Yiddish language use. The article also examines the central role of language ideologies and language learning motivations among those who learn, learn about, and/or use Yiddish. The discussion illuminates individuals’ and groups’ cross-cutting identities, hybrid forms of language, and creativity in language use across contexts. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Language ideologies Language socialization Judaism Religious affiliation Variation Yiddish
Di tsung iz di feder fun hartsn. The tongue is the pen of the heart. [Yiddish proverb] 1. Introduction This special issue focuses on the multiple ways that elements of ethnic, cultural, religious, and regional identity are connected to language use patterns in diverse contexts. Yiddish, as a Jewish language in the contemporary world, provides a compelling case study of cross-cutting cultural and religious ideologies, as seen through language socialization and language practices of various communities. Language socialization research (Duranti et al., 2012; Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez, 2002; Ochs and Schieffelin, 1984; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986) has focused on “socialization to use language and socialization through the use of language” (Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986, 163). Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) emphasize, the process of acquiring language is deeply affected by the process of becoming a competent member of a society [and] the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized to a large extent through language, by acquiring knowledge of its functions, social distribution, and interpretations in and across socially defined situations, i.e., through exchanges of language in particular social situations. (p. 264) Over time, Jews have spoken in ways that are distinct from their non-Jewish neighbors (Peltz, 2010). Jewish languages have more recently been considered “a distinctively Jewish repertoire rather than a separate system” (Benor, 2008, p. 1062). And a * 227 McCone Building, 460 Pierce Street, Monterey, CA 93940, United States. Tel.: þ1 831 647 6560. E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2014.12.006 0271-5309/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Jewish religiolect is “a spoken and/or written variety employed by the Jewish population of a specific area, although it later may extend to other communities and areas as well” (Hary and Wein, 2013, p. 88). Like other religiolects, Yiddish and its use can also be analyzed for their relationships to communities along the religious-secular spectrum. Yiddish (meaning “Jewish” in Yiddish), spoken primarily by Ashkenazic (Western, Central, and Eastern European) Jews, originated in the 11th century in the middle Rhine area (Fishman, 1991, p. 81). It arose as a result of contact between Jews’ L1 (which many believe was Aramaic) and German, and continued to develop as Jews settled in different areas across the globe. Yiddish has moved with Jews to areas around the world, including Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, North and South America, and Israel. As a result, the Yiddish language itself has incorporated both lexical and grammatical aspects of a variety of languages from these regions. Davis (1987, p. 159) notes, “the Yiddish of Eastern Europe has a basic Germanic structure, and predominantly Germanic vocabulary with a high input of Slavic and Hebrew and Aramaic words and is written in the Hebrew script”. Due to a variety of events during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the number of Yiddish speakers within nonOrthodox Jewish communities has greatly diminished. These events include the Holocaust, during which six million Jews perished (it is estimated that approximately five million of these were Yiddish speakers (Lipphardt, 2011); the migration to and partial assimilation of large numbers of Jews in the United States, Israel, South America, and other countries; and the state of Israel’s choice of Hebrew over Yiddish or other Jewish languages as the official language of the nation. However, within some Orthodox Hasidic communities the number of speakers is in fact growing (Assouline, 2010; Barriere, 2010). The contemporary picture of Yiddish language socialization is therefore a multifaceted one, necessitating detailed examination of language ideologies and practices across contexts. 2. Yiddish as part of a multilingual repertoire: recent research A number of recent books and dissertations have treated the complexity of Yiddish as part of a repertoire of languages in the contemporary age, including Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Benor, 2013), Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture (Rabinovitch et al., 2013), Heritage language socialization practices in secular Yiddish educational contexts: The creation of a metalinguistic community (Avineri, 2012), and Twenty-First Century Yiddishism (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). These all build on previous seminal work on the topic, including the in-depth ethnography Mitzvah Girls (Fader, 2009) that focused on language socialization among Orthodox Hasidic teenage girls in Brooklyn, and Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language & Culture (Shandler, 2008) that considers the cultural and linguistic purposes to which Yiddish is put by Jews and non-Jews alike. He highlights Yiddish as a “postvernacular” language, defined by the following: “in semiotic terms, the language’s primary level of signification – that is, its instrumental value as a vehicle for communicating information, opinions, feelings, ideas – is narrowing in scope. At the same time its secondary, or meta-level of signification – the symbolic value invested in the language apart from the semantic value of any given utterance in it – is expanding” (Shandler, 2008, p. 4). These works explore in depth some of the crucial features that can shape language use, including region, degree of religious observance, and language attitudes and ideologies, which are discussed in detail in the articles in this issue. All of this contemporary research on Yiddish language ideologies and practices highlight the centrality of the following social features: 1) degree of religious affiliation and language contact in diverse communities and 2) language ideologies and language learning motivations. These books employ a wide range of methodologies, including written sources from a variety of contexts and time periods, surveys/questionnaires, interviews, and ethnographic participant-observation. Across all of these studies, it becomes evident that detailed ethnographic and discourse analysis provide a deep perspective on language socialization, language ideologies, and diverse practices across communities (cf. Fader, 2009; Benor, 2012; Avineri, 2012). These methods can allow readers to grasp how different groups negotiate the complexities of use and/or talk about Yiddish among a constellation of other languages. Written sources, including literature, dictionaries, and media, can be analyzed using content analysis and other analytical forms to provide a complement to more interaction-based analyses (cf., Soldat-Jaffe, 2012; Rabinovitch et al., 2013). Ethnographic interaction-based methods, along with large-scale surveys, can provide a profound view of groups’ language ideologies and use. Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Benor, 2012) discusses the second language socialization processes of non-Orthodox Jews who become religious later in life, and the ways they demonstrate their emerging identities through diverse linguistic features, practices, affiliations, and ideologies. Heritage language socialization practices in secular Yiddish educational contexts: The creation of a metalinguistic community (Avineri, 2012) takes an ethnographic approach to analyzing Yiddish classrooms, cultural events, and festivals to develop a theoretical and empirical framework for the model of “metalinguistic community”, a community of positioned social actors engaged primarily in discourse about language and cultural symbols tied to language. Twenty-First Century Yiddishism (2012), by Tatjana SoldatJaffe, provides a historical and contemporary perspective on the complex set of changing language ideologies related to Yiddish pedagogy and use since the beginning of the twentieth century. Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture (Rabinovitch et al., 2013) is an edited volume that considers the variety of novel approaches to Yiddish in the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, including music, literature, and other forms of language use. 3. Degree of religious affiliation & language contact in diverse communities In reviewing current research on Yiddish, it becomes evident that degree of communal religious affiliation can have a heavy influence on sociophonetic choices: language is used distinctively by those along a spectrum of religious observance
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(even those under the same religious ‘title’, e.g., “Jewish”). As Avineri (2012, p. 31) notes, “the integral nature of religious symbols and practices in the history of Yiddish and its speakers.reveals the complexities of discrete categories like ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ as they apply both to communities and to languages themselves”. She describes the primarily secular attachments to Yiddish-speaking culture among “metalinguistic community” members who use Yiddish in circumscribed (and primarily public) interactional spaces. This range of “social, cultural, and religious distinctions” (p. 13) is also highlighted in Benor’s (2012) discussion of new members of Orthodox communities. Yiddish must always be considered as one language within a multilingual repertoire. The languages Yiddish is in contact with can depend heavily on country (e.g., United States, Germany, Israel), region (e.g., New York, Philadelphia, California), and religious affiliation (Orthodox, secular). It is considered an especially striking example of a contact language: “While presumably every language has in some way been influenced by some other languages, Yiddish ‘wears its history on its sleeve’, so to speak, and lends itself remarkably well to studies of contact effects” (Prince, 2001, p. 263). And this contact can manifest itself for example as code-switching, code-mixing, and/or borrowing. The studies discussed here provide evidence for how Yiddish and English (among other languages) can become intertwined across settings, by those with varying degrees of religious observance. Among secular communities, the “postvernacular” nature of Yiddish is evidenced by its study in academic contexts, token usage in festivals, and appearance on various objects and artifacts (Shandler, 2008). And musical engagement with Yiddish among “neo-klezmorim” (an ethnography of new klezmer musicians): includes the use of storytelling to evoke worlds to which many nonreligious audience members have little to no access (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). These musicians engage for example in a common practice shared with other ‘folk’ musicians, using talk between songs as pedagogical opportunities for ethnographic initiation of the listeners. The implicit teaching of Yiddish through song, to nonreligious communities, can also be found in Yiddish samples in the hip-hop of Canada-based artist DJ SoCalled (Smulyan, 2013). And there is a range of uses for Yiddish words in English among American Jews of varying levels of religious observance, as evidenced by in-depth analysis of surveys (Benor, 2011, 2013; Benor and Cohen, 2011) and other methods (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). The most striking characteristics that correlated with Yiddishisms in English among young American Jews were childhood Jewish education, Jewish socialization experiences during early adulthood, having Jewishly engaged friends, synagogue attendance and participation in a minyan, Shabbat observance, Orthodox identification, and Yiddish ancestry (Benor, 2013).1 Among “metalinguistic community” members who use Yiddish in circumscribed (and primarily public) interactional spaces, one finds primarily secular attachments to Yiddish-speaking culture (Avineri, 2012, 2014a) The study highlights the range of secular and religious commitments held by individuals who choose to learn and learn about Yiddish in the evenings and on the weekends but do not use the language as part of their daily lives. All of this research offers a variety of examples of the ways that Yiddish is used, questioned, and re-created in contemporary nonreligious United States contexts. Adults who are newly socialized into Orthodox Jewish communities utilize a distinctive English language variety in some cases imbued with religious references across diverse public and private contexts (Benor, 2012). These ba’alei teshuva (“BT’s”), literally ‘those who return’, with no linguistic background in Yiddish, will infuse their English with Yiddish lexical items as referee-designed evidence of their commitment; some of these are related to religious observance while others are not. In Orthodox communities in particular, gender ideologies are central to language practices as well. Hasidic Jewish girls are unique in their ability to move between secular and religious worlds as evidenced by code-switching and code-mixing among Yiddish, English, and Hebrew (Fader, 2009). For boys, Yiddish is a “medium of instruction and loshn-koydesh ‘holy language’ [Hebrew] is used for study and prayer” (Fader, 2009, as discussed in Avineri, 2014a). Young ultra-Orthodox girls’ ideologies and practices in Israel include high levels of proficiency and positive language attitudes toward Yiddish, in contrast to negative attitudes toward Hebrew (Tannenbaum and Abugov, 2010). Israeli ultra-Orthodox women heavily use Hebrew in Yiddish sermons (Assouline, 2014), while Yiddish is used in Orthodox women’s songs among a constellation of languages depending on one’s generation and region (Vaisman, 2013). Home-based Jewish education, as evidenced by a discussion of five books used in the Yiddish-speaking ultra-Orthodox community of di erlikhe Yidn (the “honest/virtuous/observant Jews”) in Great Britain reveals that “in its ideological authority.Yiddish is taught as what I will call the linguistic what should be. Because it is always prescriptive and ideal in its application, the what should be function is more resistant and durable, whereas the what is is most vulnerable to outside forces .” (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012, p. 54). What is described here is a prescriptivist ideology of language use, one that is antithetical to sociolinguistic empiricist ideology. As a whole, these studies provide convincing evidence for how Yiddish, English, and Hebrew (among other languages) can become intertwined across settings, by those with varying degrees of religious observance. And the languages to which one has access differ based on a range of cultural, social, and linguistic features. 4. Language ideologies and language learning motivations Language ideologies, a “mediating link between social structures and forms of talk” (Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994, p. 55) are central to sociolinguistic analysis, since they are intimately connected with actual language variation and choice. Spitulnik (1998, p. 164) notes, “language ideologies and processes of language valuation are never just about language (Kulick, 1998;
1 This survey did not account for the effect of region or heritage region, which may have also played a role in language use among the populations surveyed.
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Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994, pp. 55–56). Language ideologies are, among many other things, about the construction and legitimation of power, the production of social relations of sameness and difference, and the creation of cultural stereotypes about types of speakers and social groups”. This focus on ideologies and the ways that they can shape language use is of course relevant not only to Yiddish but to all languages (cf. Gal, 1998; Giddens, 1984; Irvine and Gal, 2000; Kroskrity, 2004; Kulick, 1998; Schieffelin and Doucet, 1998; Schieffelin et al., 1998; Spitulnik, 1998; Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994). Diverse motivations for engaging in Yiddish language socialization exist in the range of communities described above, and are intimately connected to individuals’ ideologies about the language. In any discussion of Yiddish, the question of its vitality and endangerment is central. A number of scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and language documentation have considered issues of language death, endangerment, and revitalization (cf. Abley, 2003; Bradley and Bradley, 2002; Crystal, 2000; Dalby, 2003; Dorian, 1989; Duchene and Heller, 2008; Evans, 2010; Grenoble and Whaley, 2006; Hagege, 2009; Harrison, 2007; Harrison et al., 2008; Krauss, 2007; Nettle and Romaine, 2000; Robins and Uhlenbeck, 1991; Wurm, 1991). In many ultra-Orthodox communities the language is taught to children as part of a repertoire of daily languages, and is available in educational, health-related, community-based, and work contexts (cf. Fader, 2009). For secular Yiddish metalinguistic community members, Yiddish endangerment is a phenomenological reality and a discursive strategy (Avineri, 2014b). German non-heritage learners seek to reclaim a language and culture destroyed by their ancestors (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012). These ideologies of language vitality and endangerment are especially relevant to how the language is used in conjunction with other codes across diverse communities. Those engaged in “postvernacular” (Shandler, 2008) Yiddish are primarily motivated by a desire to connect with others through nostalgia. Throughout the last century, “contemporary metalinguistic communities that focus on Yiddish have shifted to include an ever-widening group of speakers, semi-speakers, non-speakers, Jews, and non-Jews engaging in a diverse range of practices” (Avineri, 2012, p. 74). The central focus in metalinguistic communities is “nostalgia socialization, a public attention to and affective appreciation of the past as a way to understand one’s place in the present” (Avineri, 2012, p. 2). Individuals frequently exhibit an intergenerational motivation focused primarily on connecting with previous and current generations, but not one focused passing down the language to future generations. This intergenerational motivation manifests itself in different ways depending on an individual’s age. Older adult learners in the study see Yiddish as a hobby to be learned during one’s retirement; middle-aged learners see it as an affect-laden symbol that must be saved; and younger learners see it as a tool for study of history and previous generations. These ideologies and associated motivations became evident through interviews and interactions in classrooms and cultural events. Yiddishism, “the complex blend of prescriptive and descriptive discourse about Yiddish linguistic identity” (Soldat-Jaffe, 2012, p. 13) is a language ideology, one focused on a ‘diaspora nationalism’ (a concept recently discussed in detail in the 2012 book Jews & Diaspora Nationalism, edited by Simon Rabinovitch). The dual ‘prescriptive/descriptive’ nature of Yiddishism’s “tangle of competing ideologies” (p. 40), along with the ‘co-implication’ of Yiddishism and Hebraism, are useful to highlight in relation to individuals’ and groups’ motivation to use (or not use) Yiddish in the contemporary world. Newly Orthodox speakers (or ‘BT’s) engaged in socialization into Orthodox communities learn Yiddish among a repertoire of languages; Benor (2012, p. 28) notes, “It is clear that there is no single way of being a BT; differences in ideology lead to differences in behavior, including how they speak”. Language learning motivations in this group are therefore part of a broader project of integration, acceptance, and emerging identities in new communities. This can result in diverse practices including “hyperaccommodation and deliberate distinctiveness” (Benor, 2012, p. 3) as well as a “bungee effect”, in which these speakers “at first.go overboard in their use of Orthodox practices, and then they bounce back to a more comfortable level” (Benor, 2012, p. 28), suggesting that Yiddish loan words form a part of such practices. Among community members who used to be Orthodox but no longer identify as such (“Off the Derech” – “Off the Path”), complex uses of language on Facebook include religious references in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English (Nove, 2013). These unique modes of using language demonstrate diverse motivations, stances toward current communities, and nostalgia for a way of life they no longer associate with. Among both newly Orthodox (BT) and previously Orthodox (OTD) communities of practice therefore, language use displays ideologies and motivations that demonstrate the group(s) one is a part of, was a part of, want to be a part of, and do not want to be a part of. Non-Jewish German learners of Yiddish, discussed by Soldat-Jaffe (2012), provide an interesting and novel perspective on language learning motivations as related to Yiddish that connects to the previous section’s discussion of region and language use (both heritage and present home of language users). In questionnaires, these students frequently focus on the outgroup status of Yiddish speakers of previous generations, and are interested in honoring the voices of those who died in the Holocaust, both in Germany and throughout neighboring areas. Connecting language attitudes and language choices, these students conceptualize their engagement in Yiddish language learning as a way to create a “Yiddishland” in Germany, though the vast majority has no ‘heritage’ tie to the language. This contrasts with Assouline’s article (in this issue) on New Square users of Yiddish who do have such ties. Their heritage Yiddish is from one dialect area, but their contemporary usage of Loshnkoydesh (‘the holy tongue’) [Hebrew loanwords] in liturgical situations (e.g., lessons or sermons) reflects a historically-based ‘referee designed’ (Bell, 2001) convergence on features of the rebbe’s dialect. The native German speakers do have ‘linguistic heritage’, as they are able to depend on their L1 during their engagement with Yiddish in the present. This may encourage them to continue engagement with the language, despite their lack of a ‘heritage’ or cultural connection. Discourse analysis of classroom interactions (cf. Avineri, 2012) highlights the various stances toward the languages students already know when they begin engaging with Yiddish. For example, in many U.S. educational contexts, German is frequently constructed as a ‘rival’ to Yiddish language learning while previous Hebrew language learning is many times portrayed as a ‘resource’.
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This range of research highlights the centrality of language ideologies to choices related to engaging with Yiddish in the contemporary world. As the books discussed here demonstrate, individuals and groups all over the world have a variety of motivations for learning Yiddish. And their actual language use demonstrates an adherence to these diverse ideologies, in terms of incorporating the language into their repertoire of languages. 5. Conclusion This review of current literature on Yiddish language socialization and use highlights a number of relevant issues central to language variation. First of all, individuals’ and groups’ cross-cutting identities (religious, cultural, regional (both heritage and present), age-based, gender-based) are constantly shifting and emerging, and language ideologies and use both reflect and create this ongoing variation. Second, the wide range of uses to which Yiddish is put emphasizes that sociolinguistic inquiry should continue to question what counts as a language. Hybrid forms of language (code-mixing, code-switching, borrowing), and their associated ideologies, become indexical of one’s identification with certain groups and disaffiliation from others. Lastly, the one constant across all of this diversity is that individuals and groups are incredibly creative in the variety of ways they can conceptualize and engage with language. The languages one uses are therefore intimately connected with one’s thoughts and feelings (our ‘hearts’) and those of one’s communities. References Abley, M., 2003. Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Assouline, D., 2010. Verbs of Hebrew origin in Israeli Haredi Yiddish. In: Ben Shahar, R., Toury, G., Ben-Ari, N. (Eds.), Hebrew: a Living Language [“Ha-ivrit safa haya”] V. Hakibutz Hameukhad and The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University, pp. 27–45 (in Hebrew). Assouline, D., 2014a. Veiling knowledge: Hebrew sources in the Yiddish sermons of ultra-Orthodox women. Int. J. Sociol. Lang 226, 163–188. Assouline, D., 2014b. Linguistic outcomes of a hasidic renewal: the case of skver. Lang. Commun. (this issue). Avineri, N.R., 2012. Heritage Language Socialization Practices in Secular Yiddish Educational Contexts: the Creation of a Metalinguistic Community. University of California, Los Angeles, CA (Los Angeles dissertation). Avineri, N., 2014a. Yiddish: a Jewish language in the diaspora. In: Wiley, T., Kreeft-Peyton, J., Christian, D., Moore, S.K., Liu, N. (Eds.), Handbook of Heritage, Community, and Native American Languages in the United States: Research, Educational Practice, and Policy. Routledge Publishers, pp. 263–271. Avineri, N., 2014b. 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