This whole series of topics has no beginning, no middle, and certainly no end, largely due to the antics of the USA, the UK, France, and many other countries around the world.
Let's start with Yiddish, because that is something I have had a lifelong (92 and counting) involvement with and still think it is one of the most interesting languages to know something about.
My biggest regret is that those around me who spoke Yiddish, were involved with it and were interested in it are all long dead.
The following article appeared in the Saturday Age supplement "Spectrum" on 1 March 2019:
Yiddish concert embraces 'the lost language in
all of us'
As the Jewish language awakens, a group of local
musicians is putting poetry to song.
By Rachelle Unreich
March 1, 2019 — 11.00am
You could say Yiddish is having its moment, which is odd for a
language that originated among Ashkenazi Jews some time in the
11th
century.
In
Shtisel, an award-winning TV show about the
ultra-religious Jewish community in Israel, characters speak a
mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish, which is largely old Germanic
dialect.
An all-Yiddish version of
Fiddler on the Roof is
currently
playing off-Broadway, and later this year, Carnegie Hall will put
on
From Shtetl to Stage, celebrating old and new Yiddish
culture.
From left, Evelyn Krape, Simon Starr and Galit Klas in the
library
at Kadimah Yiddish Theatre.
Credit:CHRISTOPHER HOPKINS
Melbourne is no slacker in the Yiddish arena, boasting the
largest
number of Yiddish speakers in Australia. It's also home to Kadimah
Yiddish Theatre, the team behind the production
Play Me A
Poem.
At the National Theatre for one night, it will feature well-known
musicians and composers such as Deborah Conway, Lior, Willy Zygier
and Josh Abrahams creating original songs on stage to Yiddish
poetry.
Kadimah's co-artistic director, Evelyn Krape, is on a mission to
re-energise interest in Yiddish, which is sometimes referred to as
a
dying language, mainly because of its dwindling numbers: it was
once
spoken by more than 10 million Jews around the world but after the
Holocaust, this fell to an estimated 1.5 million. Krape's aim is
"to
establish Yiddish as a thriving and dynamic cultural source,"
and she recalls being validated by non-Jewish actor Rob Menzies
when
their paths crossed at a play reading. "He said, 'Yiddish is the
lost language in all of us'."
It's true that audiences around the world have been responding to
Yiddish performances. A Yiddish-language production of
Waiting
for Godot opened up a Samuel Beckett festival in Ireland in
2014, and appeared in New York again recently. Composer Josh
Abrahams
(
Addicted to Bass) performed Yiddish songs with the band
Yid! at WOMADelaide last year. "The heat was incredible,"
he recalls, "yet thousands of people were giving the horah [an
Israeli group dance] a red hot go. It was amazing."
In
Play Me A Poem, musicians will put Yiddish poetry to
unlikely tunes. Abrahams' song is reminiscent of Laurie Anderson,
while reggae, jazz and Afro-Brazilian vibes will also be in the
line-up. Simon Starr, musician and founder of the band Yid!, is
expecting "an emotional response". He believes people who
think of Yiddish as an old-fashioned language will be unprepared
for
how avant-garde some of the chosen poetry and lyrics are, despite
some being written early last century.
"It is still pretty radical for today," Starr says.
"Even if someone isn't connected to it ethnically, it's still
deep and passionate and provocative. There are audacious
commentaries
on the Bible and current affairs, and also heartfelt, harrowing
tales
of suffering and longing and separation that mirror the migration
patterns that were both a result of persecution and economic
aspirations. It's a very rich source of material."
For this show there will be surtitles, so that audiences aren't
merely listening to an orchestral piece but will have an
understanding of the lyrics. "What's really fascinating is to
see these amazingly modern responses to what are largely
pre-Holocaust poems," says Krape, who co-directs. "We want
to say to the audience: Listen – you'll hopefully be knocked off
your feet. You might think this is old, but it's not
old-fashioned."
Although many in the audience won't be familiar with Yiddish,
others will have heard it spoken by an older generation at home.
"I
don't know what's going on in the ether," says Krape, "but
it feels like people are searching for connections to community
and
heritage, in a way that is heymish [the Yiddish word for warm/
homey], but is [also] dynamic, innovative and contemporary."
Krape's parents and grandparents spoke Yiddish, but she only came
to
it as an adult, and now attends classes in Brunswick.
In Melbourne, there's a thriving community of Yiddish learning:
preschool and primary school Sholem Aleichem teaches Yiddish as a
second language (and also as a VCE subject), while Monash
University
offers it at tertiary level.
Kadimah's artistic director, Galit Klas (who is also the show's
initiator and co-director), was a Monash student, and was so
inspired
that she ultimately performed in and directed several Yiddish
productions (singing in
Yiddish Divas and writing
The
Ghetto Cabaret). "It really sparks something in their
insides for the Jewish audience; it's like this lost missing
piece,"
she says.
And it's also fulfilling for those who find modern music lacking.
"Popular music has become horrendously manufactured," says
Starr. "There's barely any trace of humanity in there, because
instruments and voices have been so treated electronically.
There's
little human feeling left; it's music by algorithm.
"I think people still respond to well-played, live music that
is played with the right intention. It's just people sharing real
stories, and I can't imagine that ever going out of fashion.
People
will respond to that heartfelt live performance, and the next
level
is when the content has another layer or resonance for them."
That layer might not just come from being Jewish. Yiddish, it
seems, has taken on a new life in modern times; TV viewers
incorporate some of the vernacular from watching shows such as
Girls
or
Seinfeld, as words like schmooze, shvitz and
kvetch
make their way into everyday language.
Starr says the thing he finds fascinating about Yiddish poetry is
that "the themes are quite universal and humanist". In New
York, he says, Yiddish "has become the hipster language of
lesbians, because it's an outsider language and it's their little
secret."
Non-Jews, such as US actor Shane Baker, have made a living out of
mastering Yiddish. Although raised as an Episcopalian in Kansas
City,
Baker was hooked after seeing a Marx Brothers film, and is now a
poster boy for Yiddish theatre.
Klas says Yiddish "doesn't feel dead to me at all".
"There's a challenge for all of us [in
Play Me A Poem]
in that we're working in a language that we don't know very well.
But
it also gives you an extra lens with which to see the world and to
create art. I don't know if it's given me a huge insight into my
Jewish identity, but it's made me more proud."
Play Me A Poem is at The National Theatre on
March 3. nationaltheatre.org.au
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The above article from Spectrum does not give the historical perspective on why Yiddish has diminished over the years.
There is only one main reason - the zionists who wanted to develop a "homeland" for Jews in Palestine wanted to remove themselves from the reminders of their origins in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world where Yiddish was the spoken language. The zionists who managed to steal the country from the Palestinians made a conscious decision to say that Hebrew was the biblical language of the Jews and therefore it needed to be the language of the "new" country being established in Palestine to be called Israel.
And so Hebrew was born as the language of the zionists who established this "new" country and Yiddish spoken there was frowned upon to the extent that it has gradually died out.
Yiddish remained a spoken language amongst Jews in the United States of America, particularly in the ghettos of New York and was also very much a language Jews spoke in Buenos Aires in Argentina. South African Jews were, in the main from Eastern Europe and their language was Yiddish.
The following is an extract from Pakn Treger, magazine of the Yiddish Book Center, and is written by Aaron Lansky for the Fall 2018 issue, part of issue number 77. Their address is:1021 West Street, Amherst, MA01002, USA
The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Isaac Bashevis Singer in 1978. He was a Yiddish writer.
This is what he said when he went to Stockholm to accept his prize:
"The high honor bestowed upon me by the Swedish Academy is also a recognition of the Yiddish language," he said in Yiddish. And he concluded with words that can be read now as prophecy:
Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and cabalists - rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful humanity.
Yiddish has not yet said its last word. And neither, I suspect, has Isaac Bashevis Singer.
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This next article is from the same Saturday Age Spectrum as the previous article on Yiddish - 1 March 2019:
Antisemitism review: Deborah Lipstadt offers a
guide for the perplexed
By Geoffrey Brahm Levey
February 21, 2019 — 3.06pm
SOCIETY
Antisemitism: Here and
Now
Deborah Lipstadt
Every serious discussion of antisemitism includes this joke: an
antisemite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely
necessary. Attributed to British political thinker Sir Isaiah Berlin,
the joke is wise as well as witty. Given the Jews' calamitous
history, an ideological or pathological form of Jew-hatred can't
simply be about not liking Jews or even treating them harshly. It
must be a prejudice with no rational basis. Although often applied to
any occurrence of hostility or discrimination against Jews,
antisemitism originally entailed a conviction that the Jews are
inherently evil. The word "anti-Semitism" was coined only
in the late-19th century but has since been applied to Jew-hatred
throughout history.
Vandalized tombs with tagged swastikas are pictured in the Jewish
cemetery of Quatzenheim, in eastern France, on Tuesday, February 19,
2019.
Credit:Jean-Francois Badias
Berlin's definition of an antisemite appears on page 14 of Deborah
Lipstadt's new book,
Antisemitism: Here and Now. A Holocaust
historian at Emory University in Atlanta, Lipstadt attained
prominence after David Irving sued her in a British court in 1996 for
describing him as a "Holocaust denier". She and her
publisher famously won that case, as portrayed in the 2016 film,
Denial. The present book is not a history but a reckoning
with antisemitism in its current guises and contortions. (Lipstadt
rejects the old spelling of "anti-Semitism" as it wrongly
implies that the opposition is to "Semitism" rather than to
the Jews, as was always intended).
Alas, more than 70 years after the Nazis' quest to exterminate the
Jews of Europe, cases still abound in which Jews are variously slain,
vilified, excluded, or threatened because they are Jews. In October
last year, for example, a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue
claimed the lives of 11 congregants and wounded seven others. There
have been murderous attacks on Jews also in France and Brussels in
recent years. In Britain, graffiti with messages such "Adolf
Hitler was right" and "death to all Jews" has appeared
in its cities.
Antisemitism. By Deborah Lipstadt.
Closer to home, Jews have been targeted and intimidated on Sydney
public transport and while walking in Bondi. Earlier this month, more
than 20 swastika symbols were daubed overnight around the Bondi area.
Security guards are standard at Jewish schools and synagogues in
Western societies. As Lipstadt observes, if anything, the bigots are
growing more confident.
The current situation is complicated by two factors. First,
Western Jews (in general) now enjoy a privileged status. Highly
educated, socioeconomically successful, and politically influential,
they are perceived by some less fortunate and marginalised as part of
the dominant white majority. Second, there are the vexed issues of
the Israel-Palestine conflict and of controversial Israeli government
policies. Much of
Antisemitism: Here and Now is devoted to
discussing cases thrown up by these twin associations.
The book is written as an exchange of letters between Lipstadt and
a whip-smart Jewish student, Abigail, and a non-Jewish law colleague,
Joe, at her university. The format allows these fictional
interlocutors to variously voice their confusion, outrage, and
internal conflicts about episodes of apparent antisemitism on campus
and in the wider world. Lipstadt responds sagely as a kind of guide
to the perplexed.
The discussion begins by distinguishing different types of
antisemite. There is the extremist who is upfront about his or her
thirst for the Jews' demise. There is the "dinner party
antisemite" who wouldn't dream of physically harming Jews but
wants to exclude them from their golf or country club. There is the
"clueless antisemite" who remarks to her Jewish friend that
she, of all people, should be able to spot a bargain. And then there
are the "antisemitic enablers", who, while not antisemites
themselves, encourage the antisemitism of others.
Here, Lipstadt points her finger at both President Donald Trump,
on the right, and British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, on the
left. Trump has cultivated not only nationalist but also nativist
sentiment. He defended the white supremacists and neo-Nazis at the
2017 Charlottesville rally, for example, even after one of them drove
a truck through the counter-protesters. During his presidential
campaign he retweeted an image of Hilary Clinton alongside a Jewish
star embossed with the accusation of monied corruption. One of his
ads showed three prominent American Jews with commentary about
"global special interests" that "control the levers of
power in Washington".
Corbyn has a history of arch criticism of Israel but also of
supporting blatant antisemites. Last year, video emerged of him
speaking at a Palestinian Return Centre event in 2013 in which he
suggested that "Zionists" do not understand English irony
despite living in the country all their lives, a comment that has not
helped him shake the accusation that he himself is an antisemite.
Lipstadt marshals compelling cases against both politicians as
"enablers", while noting that Corbyn's disposition appears
to be sincere whereas Trump's appears to be cynically directed at
energising his electoral base.
The book further explores such issues as the difference between
antisemitism and racism, antisemitism within the Islamic world, the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the
"toxification of Israel", and the new hostility towards
Jews within progressive movements and on campus. Lipstadt wisely
cautions against an attitude of Jewish victimhood. She also
criticises Jewish organisations that respond to the BDS by seeking to
"boycott the boycotters" or which, like canarymission.org,
seek to intimidate Pro-Palestinian professors and activists by
compiling public dossiers on them.
Antisemitism is antisemitism regardless of the status of its
targets. The Pittsburgh synagogue victims are no less murdered for
having been visibly white and comfortably middle class. And the lazy
equation of "wealthy and white" with domination overlooks
the prominent involvement of Jews in progressive movements including
the civil rights movement and feminism.
Less satisfactory is Lipstadt's treatment of the Israel factor.
She is wrong to claim that questioning Israel's right to exist is
axiomatically antisemitic. To demand only Israel's disestablishment
among the family of nations, many of which are guilty of systematic
abuses, is clearly discriminatory. However, one can hold that it was
a mistake for a Jewish state to be established in Palestine without
remotely being antisemitic. Even the founding father of modern
Zionism, Theodor Herzl, initially campaigned to place the Jewish
homeland in East Africa.
Criticism of Israel as a Jewish state is dismissed too quickly.
Lipstadt counters that other democracies have official state
religions. True, but the issue is whether and how the state religion
is used in the distribution of individuals' rights, opportunities and
overall treatment. It should be of concern that national fronts in
Europe and alt-right figures in the United States laud Israel as an
ethno-democracy while peddling antisemitism at home.
The 2018 Global Anti-Semitism Report found that "70 per cent
of anti-Jewish attacks were anti-Israel in nature". Israeli
brutality towards the Palestinians provokes brutal and intemperate
politics elsewhere in reaction. It is also the case that
Israel-bashing attracts and provides cover for genuine antisemites.
The attempt to call this out has been hampered by the legacy of
Israeli politicians and Jewish leaders responding to any criticism of
Israel with the charge of antisemitism.
Often, non-Jews who are concerned about the Palestinians'
situation invoke traditional antisemitic tropes without realising it
or intending to do so. A current example is the controversy that has
ensnared US Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, who suggested in
tweets that American support for Israel is "all about the
Benjamins" (referring to Benjamin Franklin on the $100 note) and
the Israel lobby bribing politicians. The tweets sparked an uproar, a
rebuke from House Leader Nancy Pelosi, and ultimately Omar's contrite
apology. But as Peter Beinhart noted in
The Forward, those
who are quick to condemn this clumsy verbal bigotry are deathly
silent about the tangible bigotry that Palestinians in the West Bank
face daily courtesy of Israeli law and policy.
Although most diasporic Jews do not hold Israeli citizenship, a
central plank of Zionism is the unity of the Jewish people. Many Jews
in and outside of Israel have protested "not in our name"
regarding Israeli government policies. Many more believe that this
has nothing to do with them, not unlike ordinary Muslims who believe
they shouldn't have to answer for the actions of Islamic militants.
And many support or defer to Israeli government actions.
The book closes with Lipstadt counselling Joe not to be afraid, as
a non-Jew, to call Israel out when he believes it has crossed a line.
Sage advice for Jews as well.
Geoffrey Brahm Levey is an Associate Professor of
Political Science at the University of New South Wales.
In 2017, 
.jpg "Students give Kate Thwaites a booklet")
acts
of disruptive civil disobedience, commencing with a protest that closed
down much of the centre of London for several hours on .jpg "Rebel for Life")
