Yiddishism is a cultural and linguistic movement that advocates and promotes the use of Yiddish, the traditional vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, which was spoken by over 11 million people before World War II. It began in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th century. Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Mocher Sforim, I. L. Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem. The Yiddishist movement gained popularity alongside the growth of the Jewish Labor Bund and other Jewish political movements, particularly in the Russian Empire and United States.
The movement sharply lost momentum in the course of the 20th century, hampered by the language's low prestige in a context of both Jewish assimilation and Hebrew revival, the physical annihilation of most European Yiddish speakers in the Holocaust, followed by the linguistic assimilation of remaining communities, including in Israel, where Yiddish would wind up largely supplanted by Modern Hebrew.
19th-century origins The Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, movement that arose in the late 18th century played a large role in rejecting Yiddish as a Jewish language. However, many maskilim, particularly in the Russian Empire, expanded the Yiddish press to use it as a tool to spread their enlightenment ideas, thereby building a platform for future Yiddishists. Aleksander Zederbaum, a prominent member of the Haskalah, founded the influential Yiddish periodical Kol Mevasser, which would become a mainstay of the Yiddish press, including not only news but also stories and several novels in serialization.
Joshua Mordechai Lifshitz, who is considered the father of Yiddishism and Yiddish lexicography, circulated an essay entitled “The Four Classes” () in 1861 in which he referred to Yiddish as a completely separate language from both German and Hebrew, and in the European context of his audience, the "mother tongue" of the Jewish people. In the essay, which was eventually published in 1863 in an early issue of the influential Yiddish periodical Kol Mevasser, he contended that the refinement and development of Yiddish were indispensable for the humanization and education of Jews. In a subsequent essay published in the same periodical, he also proposed Yiddish as a bridge linking Jewish and European cultures. Scholar Mordkhe Schaechter characterizes Lifshitz as "[t]he first conscious, goal-oriented language reformer" in the field of Yiddish, and highlights his pivotal role in countering the negative attitudes toward the language propagated within the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment movement:
Although an adherent of the Enlightenment, [Lifshitz] broke with its sterile anti-Yiddish philosophy, to become an early ideologue of Yiddishism and of Yiddish-language planning. He courageously stood up for the denigrated folk tongue, calling for its elevation and cultivation. He did this in the form of articles in the weekly Kol-mevaser (in the 1860s) and in his excellent Russian-Yiddish and Yiddish-Russian dictionaries [...].Schaechter, Mordkhe. "Yiddish language modernization and lexical elaboration", in : Language Reform: History and Future, ed. by Istvan Fodor, Vol. III, Hamburg, 1984, pp. 195–196.
Several prominent Yiddish authors also emerged in this time, transforming the perception of Yiddish from a "jargon" of no literary value into an accepted artistic language. Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz are regarded as foundational to modern Yiddish fiction and were highly influential, central figures in the Yiddishist movement.
The Czernowitz Conference
The Conference for the Yiddish Language (), commonly known as the Czernowitz Conference () was held from August 30 to September 4, 1908 in the Austro-Hungarian city of Czernowitz, Bukovina (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine). The conference, which proclaimed Yiddish a modern language with a developing high culture, was proposed by Nathan Birnbaum, and organized by members of the University of Vienna's Yiddish club, which he founded. He promoted the conference in a 1908 trip to America. Jacob Gordin, David Pinski, Chaim Zhitlowsky, and A. M. Evalenko endorsed the plan and also assisted. The organizers urgently stated that Yiddish was a unifying force in Eastern European Jewry, but needed support because people were ashamed of the language, and it was disorganized.
Conference There was no political party or organizational affiliation, and invitations were distributed by geographic proximity. The General Jewish Labour Bund was underrepresented, while local Zionist groups, such as Poale Zion were overrepresented. The conference hosted seventy delegates from various sectors of Jewish life. The only classic Yiddish writer to attend was I. L. Peretz, as Sholem Aleichem and Mendele Mocher Sforim were sick at the time. However many younger Yiddish writers were present, notably Sholem Asch, Avrom Reyzen, and Hersh Dovid Nomberg. Their attendance helped attain publicity in newspapers for the conference. Other notable delegates included Noach Pryłucki, Matthias Mieses, Mordecai Spector, and Gershom Bader.
Solomon Birnbaum, Nathan's son, kept the minutes, which were lost or destroyed during World War I. The agenda attempted to avoid politics, but was wide in scope, advocating the promotion of Yiddish teachers, schools, press, literature, and theatre. It also sought to reverse the trends among young people toward Hebrew and other local national languages, translate the Bible into the language, and standardize the orthography. Peretz gave an ambitious and authoritative speech about the future aspirations of Yiddish, which was taken with "spiritual hunger" by the attendees, according to Mieses.
Status of Yiddish Pinski correctly expected there would be a question of the status of Yiddish. Attendees questioned if Yiddish was only "a" national language of the Jewish people, or if it was "the" national language. This topic soon dominated the discussion at the expense of the rest of the agenda. Even among the two sides were varying motivations. Esther Frumkin felt that the conference was not class conscious and would reject the Bundist view that Yiddish was the language of the Jewish people. She walked out of a banquet when fellow delegates were not seated because they did not wear suit jackets. The Bund later maintained that the conference was a minor event and did not start a Yiddishist movement. Attendees from Galicia had hoped the conference would adopt Yiddish as the national language of the Jewish people, expecting a language question in the 1910 Austro-Hungarian census.
Meanwhile, Zionist and religious attendees felt that pro-Yiddish sentiments impacted the revival of Hebrew. Some were deeply upset when Hebrew was deemed a "putrefying cadaver", a relic of the past and of prayer. Religious delegates also felt the conference was too secular.
Nomberg proposed a resolution that was ultimately adopted, which deemed Yiddish was a national language of the Jewish people. It was a compromise view, but still left many dissatisfied. Birnbaum was tapped to run an organization birthed from the conference, which was to promote speakers, publish books, establish schools and courses, promote music and theatre, and plan future international conferences. However, the position was unpaid and fundraising was limited and he turned to Agudat Yisrael to preserve and unify the Jewish people. Asch, Nomberg, Peretz, and Reyzen toured Jewish communities of Galicia and Bukovina to promote interest in Yiddish language, literature, and culture.
Legacy The conference ultimately only had a symbolic value, but marked a high point of developing Yiddish culture, increasing its prestige. It did not lead directly to any of the subsequent organizations that promoted Yiddishism, such as the Central Yiddish School Organization in 1921, YIVO in 1925, and the post-Holocaust Congress for Jewish Culture in 1948, but laid the groundwork for them. Hillel Zeitlin, Reuben Brainin, and Morris Rosenfeld criticized it, Ahad Ha'am ridiculed the conference as a "Purim spectacle". However, Shmuel Niger and Israel Isidor Elyashev considered it a historic achievement.
Modern scholarly assessment varies, with Philip Kutner noting the conference was a failure, but also held that it legitimized what was until then "a language of the streets". Emanuel Goldsmith stated in an interview with Jewish Currents that the conference put not Yiddish, but Yiddishism, "on the map": the idea to preserve, sustain, develop, and encourage culture in the language. Ruth Kaswan wrote that the conference "was a landmark occasion in the rise of Jewish consciousness and liberation...[and] a declaration of solidarity with the Jewish masses that was by definition a revolutionary act." She cited the creation of a school system, and an almost parallel state within the states of Eastern Europe, during the interbellum, as well as a "sense of pride and identity".
According to professor Iosif Vaisman, the conference also increased the prominence of the city of Czernowitz, and inspired similar conferences for Hebrew and Catalan. He also noted that it led to the creation of secular Jewish schools, teaching of the grammar and literature, as well as an increase in Yiddish writers and books. He contends that it helped develop the Bund movement, and discussions on the rights of minorities even influenced the Treaty of Versailles.
The conference was commemorated nearly every decade since it was held, notably in 1928. A fiftieth anniversary gathering was held in Montreal. Gatherings were held around the world for the 100th anniversary, in La Jolla, California, Czernowitz itself, and at York University in Toronto where a conference was held on April 13–14, 2008, titled "Czernowitz at 100: The First Yiddish Language Conference in Historical Perspective".
YIVO YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute) was established in Wilno, Poland (Vilnius, now part of Lithuania) in 1925. YIVO was initially proposed by Yiddish linguist and writer Nochum Shtif. He characterized his advocacy of Yiddish as "realistic" Jewish nationalism, contrasted to the "visionary" Hebraists, and the "self-hating" assimilationists who adopted German, Russian, or Polish. YIVO’s work was largely secular in nature, reflecting its original members. The Division of Philology, which included Max Weinreich, standardized Yiddish orthography under YIVO. Simultaneously, the Division of History, originally headed by Elias Tcherikower, translated major works from Russian to Yiddish and conducted further research on historical topics.
Soviet Russia – The Bund
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, a secular Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire, was founded in Vilnius in 1897, and active through 1920, promoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language, and to some extent opposed the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew. Moreover, beyond the Labour Bund group in Poland, the International Jewish Labor Bund regarded Yiddish as the Jewish national language.
In the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Yiddish was promoted as the language of the Jewish proletariat. It became one of the official languages in the Ukrainian People's Republic and in some of the Soviet republics, such as the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic. A few of the republics included Yiddish public institutions like post offices and courts. A public educational system entirely based on the Yiddish language was established and comprised kindergartens, schools, and higher educational institutions. Advanced research institutions and Yiddish publishing houses began to open throughout the Soviet Union. At the same time, Hebrew was considered a bourgeois language and its use was generally discouraged.