Yiddish

The most widely spoken Jewish language on the eve of the Holocaust, Yiddish continues to play a significant role in Jewish life today, from Hasidim for whom it is a language of daily life to avant-garde performers, political activists, and LGBTQ writers turning to Yiddish for inspiration. Yiddish: Biography of a Language presents the story of this centuries-old language, the defining vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, from its origins to the present.

Jeffrey Shandler tells the multifaceted history of Yiddish in the form of a biographical profile, revealing surprising insights through a series of thematic chapters. He addresses key aspects of Yiddish as the language of a diasporic population, whose speakers have always used more than one language. As the vernacular of a marginalized minority, Yiddish has often been held in low regard compared to other languages, and its legitimacy as a language has been questioned. But some devoted Yiddish speakers have championed the language as embodying the essence of Jewish culture and a defining feature of a Jewish national identity. Despite predictions of the demise of Yiddish-dating back well before half of its speakers were murdered during the Holocaust-the language leads a vibrant, evolving life to this day.

"This book provides an introduction to Yiddish, the foundational vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, both as a subject of interest in its own right and for the distinctive issues that Yiddish raises for the study of languages generally, including language diaspora, language fusion, multilingualism, language ideologies, and postvernacularity. By approaching the study of Yiddish through the rubric of a biography, rather than following a more conventional chronological, geographical, or ideological approach, this book examines the story of Yiddish thematically. Each chapter addresses a different "biographical" topic concerning the character of the language and how it has been conceptualized, ranging across time, space, and speech communities. These chapters interrelate discussions of the language's origins, characteristics, and development with the dynamics of its implementation in Ashkenazi culture from the Middle Ages to the present. These thematic chapters also examine the symbolic investments that both Jews and others have made in Yiddish over time, which are key to understanding both general perceptions and scholarly analyses of the language, especially in the modern period"--

Shandler ably examines aspects of the language itself, ranging from its shifting orthography to its borrowings from other languages ... the result is a tremendous resource that is likely the most comprehensive introduction to the language that we have. -- Howard Freedman, J. Weekly

Jeffrey Shandler's biography of the Yiddish language is that rare book that is both entertaining and edifying. The book provides fascinating accounts of the linguistic and intellectual histories of Yiddish and those who study them. From the sweep of history to the politics of grammar, this book will be of interest to Jewish studies scholars and a more popular audience. A tour de force. -- Ayala Fader, Professor of Anthropology, Fordham University, and author of Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age

In Jeffrey Shandler's new 'biography' of the language, Yiddish comes alive in its historical formations and in the multifarious ways it has been understood: in the names by which it was known, in the places it lived, in its appearance and gender and health and life expectancy. With practitioners like Shandler, the prognosis for Yiddish, and Yiddish studies, has never been better. -- Naomi Seidman, Chancellor Professor of the Arts, Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto, and author of A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish

Ingeniously conceived as a biography, Jeffrey Shandler's Yiddish is a multi-dimensional tour of the language and the people who spoke it (and spoke about it). Its erudition, creativity, and range are astonishing. Free of disciplinary shackles, scholarly yet accessible, Yiddish belongs to a genre of its own. -- Tony Michels, George L. Mosse Professor of American Jewish History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York