Funny, sad, and biting – why Yiddish isn’t going anywhere

It has a bitter wit with an instinctual way of letting off steam and the most colourful curses, but many claimed that it wouldn’t survive.

However, Yiddish, for all its quirkiness, is unlikely to go anywhere and though experts learn it, there are groups springing up around the world to speak it, laugh in it, and keep it alive.

Dr Stanley Katzeff is a part of such a group in South Africa, with up to 40 people from Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town – and internationally from Israel, Belgium, England, and Lithuania – that meets every two weeks over this idiosyncratic language.

“It’s a language we don’t want to forget,” he said. “We lost two-thirds of our Jewish population during the Holocaust, and learning Yiddish makes sure we don’t forget them.”

Mary Kropman, who also attends the meetings, says it’s a “connection to my late parents, and brings back childhood memories”. She offers examples of Yiddish wisdom, “No answer is also an answer”, and “A half-truth is a whole lie.” And one of its many insights, “Man plans and G-d laughs”.

They explain their attraction to this language, including the fact that it has a spice and spirit that’s often lost in translation. It’s tough to convey its poignancy, sadness, heartbreak, wisdom, and humour in translation.

It is, according to a European Parliament Think Tank, considered to be a part of European folk culture, and contributed to the work of great writers and musicians.

Like the Jews of the early twentieth century, Yiddish can be described as stateless. It neared extinction when it lost most of its speakers to the Holocaust and, according to the Think Tank, also suffered under successive waves of Jewish migration, persecution, pogroms, Stalinism, war, Nazism, and all forms of antisemitism.

According to Michael Wex, New York Times bestselling author of Born to Kvetch, Yiddish language and Culture in All its Moods, Yiddish is the language of a powerless people, and was in many ways a way to “blow off steam”. It was the Jewish verbal home, and “long served as a place […] they could go to”.

Wex says Yiddish, more than most languages, embodies a sceptical state of mind, a discouraging posture, and a suspicious attitude to the then ever hostile world. He calls it a language of exile, that likes to argue with everybody and everything. One of the examples he gives is what he calls a colourful curse, “You should swell up and suffer from varicose veins.” Another from author John Kunza, “May you be so rich your widow’s husband has to never work a day.” Yiddish humour isn’t gentle or polite.

While it may also be cynical and cutting at times, others have a less sardonic view of it. Dr Veronica Belling, who studied Yiddish for three years on the Weinreich Program in New York, has translated several Yiddish books and is an honorary research associate at the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies & Research at the University of Cape Town. She describes Yiddish as a language of humour. She also says it contains “the spirit and character of Jewish people”, and that it gets straight to the point and says things as they are. An example of this, she says is the idiom, “Even if you hit your head against a wall, it’s not going to help.”

The humour and succinct nature of Yiddish Belling refers to can be glimpsed in Dr Marnie Winston-Macauley’s telling of the following joke, “The Italian says, ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have wine.’ The Scotsman says, ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have a Scotch.’ The Russian says, ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have vodka.’ The Jew says, ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have diabetes.’”

The rich cultural world of Yiddish is embodied by the figure of Sholem Aleichem, and later within a Samuel Beckett play. Sholem Aleichem was a Yiddish author and playwright. His works give a wonderful insight into shtetl life, and showcase Yiddish as the language of the Jewish people. The play Fiddler on the Roof is based on the collected stories he wrote titled Tevye’s Daughters.

The iconic and much celebrated play, Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett was translated and performed in Yiddish. According to Ted Merwin in his article written about it for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the reason Yiddish went so well with Beckett’s play was because “it’s such an expressive language, inundated with mirth and woe”. Yiddish was said to add new depths to an already intensely profound work.

Many of those who join Yiddish groups like the Zoom group in South Africa became interested in the language as a way of keeping family memories and traditions alive.

Belling heard Yiddish in her youth, listening to her mother and six sisters and two brothers talking to each other. Kropman’s mother wrote letters to her only in Yiddish when she was at boarding school, and Katzeff would hear it from his bobba and zaida.

Yiddish enjoyed a revival in the 1980s and early 2000s together with Klezmer music.

The groups enable those with a history of Yiddish in their families to enjoy it together, keeping their memories alive and learning more about the rich history we come from and its poignant and expressive language. Members say it’s a fine example of the importance of family in the closer and wider sense.

• If you’re interested in attending Zoom lessons, contact the Cape Jewish Seniors Association. The current bi-weekly Yiddish Zoom presentations were initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in February 2021 when in-person meetings were no longer possible. Presentations are given by highly qualified teachers including Belling and Rochelle Wainer from the Yiddish Folkshul in Johannesburg. There’s also a beginner’s group run by Sybil Castle.