AH Challenge -> Yiddish as Israel's national language

[DuQuense]

Pre WW1yiddish was spoken by Most of the German and East European Jews,
East Europeans made up most of the pre war Immigrants to Israel, and Hebrew appeared to be a dying language.
However between the Wars, sententious efforts were made to promote Hebrew, and in 1948 the new nation of Israel adopted Hebrew as the National Language.

?What would be needed to have this effort fail, and Yiddish be adopted instead?

 

[Slowpoke]

Well, for one, you need a sizeable majority of Ashkenazim in the new state. Sephardim, African and Middle Eastern Jews don't speak Yiddish.

Another would be to considerably tone down Jewish nationalism. The rediscovery/reinvention of Hebrew was a legitimisation symbol, a symbol of continuity between the (at the time) nascent state of Israel and the ancient Jewish kingdom. You can read quite a large amount of political history works about legitimacy, symbolism and nation-building.

 

[Keenir]

Pre WW1yiddish was spoken by Most of the German and East European Jews,
East Europeans made up most of the pre war Immigrants to Israel, and Hebrew appeared to be a dying language.

Technically it was a dead language, used only for religious reciting.

there's a fair bit of information in Spoken Here: travels among the world's vanishing languages about the hurdles encountered in reviving Hebrew (such as the fact that the efforts of one prominent reviver were not appreciated by his wife and children, or another reviver who did not permit his wife to speak in any language but Hebrew (at a time when there were less than 30 Hebrew words for things that didn't exist in the time of the Temple))

there's also a chapter on Yiddish, so you get the other side of the story.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Technically it was a dead language, used only for religious reciting.

there's a fair bit of information in Spoken Here: travels among the world's vanishing languages about the hurdles encountered in reviving Hebrew (such as the fact that the efforts of one prominent reviver were not appreciated by his wife and children, or another reviver who did not permit his wife to speak in any language but Hebrew (at a time when there were less than 30 Hebrew words for things that didn't exist in the time of the Temple))

there's also a chapter on Yiddish, so you get the other side of the story.

If a Jewish homeland for European Jews was carved out East Prussia or East Africa or some place equally random, then yes, Yiddish could be the national language. But an Israel on the site of historic Israel? I doubt Yiddish would work for the reasons others mentioned.

Now.. Could modern Hebrew have Askenazi pronunciation, and have 50% of the vocabulary (anything modern) be Yiddish? That might be possible.

[Analogies: my former boss, who grew up in Paraguay, said that the Guarani words for 6-10 were borrowed from Spanish, as the pre-Contact natives used a different counting system. Or look at English, while a direct descendant of Old ENglish, and still a Germanic language has a majority of words from French/Latin]

 

[Valdemar II]

Honestly the solution are quite easy, you just need more Ashkenazim Jews in Israel, let's say that something goes wrong for Germany and it's defeated a year earlier, we would see a much greater survival by the Ashkenazims, whom likely would still want to leave Europe. With their group even more dominating and with a greater survival of the easten Ashkenazim, whom spoke Yiddish to greater extent than the westen ones, we would likely see a Yiddish speaking Isreal.

 

[Jape]

Perhaps a bi-lingual Israel? If you do something along Valdemar's lines with the population already having a working 'Jewish' language, I doubt Herbrew wouldn't reappear but maybe the Zionist leadership would decide to use Yiddish as the working tongue of the country while new generations would be taught both in schools?

 

[Wolfpaw]

The main problem with having Yiddish as the national language of Israel is the Holocaust. The majority of the Jewish victims were members of Eastern and Central European Jewry, the stronghold of Yiddish. The majority of survivors happened to be either Sephardim and Western Ashkenaz, neither of which spoke nor approved of Yiddish and were the strongholds of the Hebrew revivalist movement.

With the devastation of Eastern Jewry, the main obstacle to Hebrew revivalism and Western Jewish intellectualism was all but gone, so they, of course, came to dominate the creative stages of modern Israel.

To make this challenge work you need either a much more limited/less effective or nonexistant Holocaust, or a much much much larger influx of European Jews to Palestine before the outbreak of WWII.

Or you could pull the irony card and have the Nazis deport Jews to Palestine (like they thought of doing before deciding on Madagascar prior to Wannsee).

 

[Minchandre]

Please note that Hebrew (with a Sephardi accent, no less) was being used by Zionist for quite a while when there were essentially only Ashkenazim involved, and that historically, the Ashkenazim didn't much care about the Sephardim (viewing the Mizrachi Jews at least the same way any European would regard any Arab).

The fascination with Hebrew was a strongly romantic one, and also one tied in, as someone mentioned above, to nationalism - "We're a people, with a language." The only way I can see Yiddish remaining is if a state is force on the Jews, rather than created by them.

 

[Keenir]

Well, for one, you need a sizeable majority of Ashkenazim in the new state. Sephardim, African and Middle Eastern Jews don't speak Yiddish.

Why's that? neither Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews spoke Hebrew before Israel was reborn - they used Hebrew.

 

[Emperor Qianlong]

The fascination with Hebrew was a strongly romantic one, and also one tied in, as someone mentioned above, to nationalism - "We're a people, with a language." The only way I can see Yiddish remaining is if a state is force on the Jews, rather than created by them.

Exactly, which is also why the usage of Yiddish in post-independence Israel was discouraged (or even suppressed), despite it was - for centuries - the living language of the central european Jews. Basically, for the Yiddish language, this meant a double disaster - first the death of millions of speakers in the Holocaust, and then the large-scale abandoning of the language by the surviving Ashkenazi Jews in favour of Hebrew.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Why's that? neither Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews spoke Hebrew before Israel was reborn - they used Hebrew.

Ummm... But the others did 1) use Hebrew, so they're part way there and 2) spoke Arabic which is fairly closely related to Hebrew, while Yiddish is in a different language family altogether.

 

[Keenir]

Ummm... But the others did 1) use Hebrew, so they're part way there

they used Hebrew like the Catholic nations used Latin - a liturgical language.

and 2) spoke Arabic which is fairly closely related to Hebrew, while Yiddish is in a different language family altogether.

the Sephardim and Jews of Kerala and China spoke Arabic?

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

they used Hebrew like the Catholic nations used Latin - a liturgical language.

Umm... A little more than that. Like Catholic priests used Latin, more like. But yes. Still, being able to understand any passage of the Bible (i.e. Tanakh) is a HUGE step in the direction of being able to use the language every day. It's nothing like being able to use it everyday, but it is a huge step.

the Sephardim and Jews of Kerala and China spoke Arabic?

How many Jews from Kerala and China came to Israel OTL?
As for the Sephardim, well it depends. Any settled in Arab lands would, of course, and some in Turkish speaking lands might. By this point there aren't any left in Spain. And yes, they'll likely be speaking Ladino at home.

Ya, my statement about them 'all' speaking Arabic was a gross over simplification. Still, none of those spoke Yiddish, either.

 

[MacCaulay]

Why's that? neither Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews spoke Hebrew before Israel was reborn - they used Hebrew.

That's what I was thinking. They could have just as easily learned Yiddish as Hebrew. And there were already words for common household products in Yiddish. Not so in Hebrew. Hebrew is one of the world's most messed up languages because they're constantly tacking on words and phrases that have no relation to a language that was locked in statis for hundreds of years. At least Yiddish was still developing.

 

[Keenir]

Umm... A little more than that. Like Catholic priests used Latin, more like. But yes. Still, being able to understand any passage of the Bible (i.e. Tanakh) is a HUGE step in the direction of being able to use the language every day. It's nothing like being able to use it everyday, but it is a huge step.

the revival of Hebrew as a casual language, makes Ataturk's reform of the Turkish language, look humble and small-scale.

How many Jews from Kerala and China came to Israel OTL?

as my understanding is - from books on the subject - almost all of them. ie, the Baghdad Jews, the Black Jews and White Jews, and there was a third group whose name escapes me.

As for the Sephardim,
And yes, they'll likely be speaking Ladino at home.

....which is as Hebrew as Yiddish.

Ya, my statement about them 'all' speaking Arabic was a gross over simplification. Still, none of those spoke Yiddish, either.

respectively: no worries, we all do it. true.

 

[Dan1988]

the revival of Hebrew as a casual language, makes Ataturk's reform of the Turkish language, look humble and small-scale.

I agree - when you replace a word like doküman with belge, you know something's going wrong.

as my understanding is - from books on the subject - almost all of them. ie, the Baghdad Jews, the Black Jews and White Jews, and there was a third group whose name escapes me.

The Lemba?

....which is as Hebrew as Yiddish.

And as close to Cervantes as you're ever going to get.

 

[Keenir]

I agree - when you replace a word like doküman with belge, you know something's going wrong.

it could be worse...."Okay, who's on the sach-rachok this time?" ("telephone" in Hebrew as it was being revived)

wait, what I meant by making Ataturk's efforts look humble, was the sheer scale of it all - Osmanliji was at least a living language from which to start from.

The Lemba?

They're southeast African. the third group I can't think of, lived alongside the Baghdad Jews in India.

And as close to Cervantes as you're ever going to get.

de nada.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

the revival of Hebrew as a casual language, makes Ataturk's reform of the Turkish language, look humble and small-scale.

No argument there!

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

as my understanding is - from books on the subject - almost all of them. ie, the Baghdad Jews, the Black Jews and White Jews, and there was a third group whose name escapes me.

Googling, the Baghdadi Jews came from Muslim countries, and it looks like they still spoke Arabic among themselves.

 

[Dan1988]

Googling, the Baghdadi Jews came from Muslim countries, and it looks like they still spoke Arabic among themselves.

Which means that the Baghdadi Jews were Mizrahi.