Dovid Katz

Dovid Katz's "Lithuanian Jewish Culture" is a fascinating study of a bygone world that had contrasts between ages of toleration and cultural progress versus those of narrowness and repression, including disastrous pogroms. Katz's scholarship is magnificent. The book combines well the general with the specific - there are discussions of culture and history and important religious and secular figures, along with vignettes of obscure authors and thinkers who may have published one book but are otherwise unknown.

Dovid Katz extensively discusses the Ashkenazic trilingualism of the culture - the people's use of various forms of Yiddish, ancient and modern Hebrew, and Aramaic - while also dealing with local languages. Emphasized throughout is "the Lithuanian passion for learning."

The culture lasted and flowered for many hundreds of years, often in much more favorable circumstances than for Jewish cultures in the rest of Europe. Katz discusses the vibrant years between the world wars, until over ninety percent of the Litvaks perished in the Holocaust.

There is a long bibliography to aid a reader's further interest, and there are many maps in color and photos that help the Lithuanian Jewish people - rich or poor, scholarly or illiterate - come alive to the reader. The maps are particularly useful because of the subject of a stateless Jewish culture and the fluidity of national borders and names. For example, in a short span of years a person could live in three differently named cities in three differently named countries, yet never have left home.

Note that "Lithuania" or "Lita" as used in the book refers historically to a much larger area of northern Europe - including parts of what are now Poland, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine - than the current independent Baltic country of Lithuania. Of the many important cities of the historic Lithuania discussed in the book, probably the most important is Vilnius, the capital of modern Lithuania, and known also as Vilna or Wilno. Before World War II Vilna was often called the Jerusalem of the North or of Lithuania, and the book covers some of the current efforts since the Holocaust to revive that Jewish cultural importance of Lithuania and Vilna in particular.

Note that the book was first published in Vilnius in 2004 with the support of various Lithuanian institutions, and then a reprint edition came out in 2010. The book is in English. Both editions have a large format, about 11 by 9½ inches. The contents of the two editions seem to be the same, but with some minor typesetting changes, and the 2010 edition has a colorful slipcover, which I have not seen on the various copies of the 2004 edition I saw in a bookstore in Vilnius and a university library.

To aid the many virtues of his scholarship, Katz needs a better editor, e.g., one who knows the difference between the words "principle" and "principal." However, some major corrections were made in the 2010 edition, such as on page 195, where a section of the first edition ends with the word "and" and an incomplete thought and sentence. On page 346 the newer edition has the correct Yehuda Pen painting "Get," which replaces an erroneous, unrelated painting.

Errors remain, including some comical ones. For example, at page 205 both editions say, "The Jewish Messiah represents a goal that can be attainted [sic] only in a moral and ethical society, ...," the author or the editor not knowing the important distinction between the words "attaint" and "attain." Also, at page 309 the Jewish bootmaker, revolutionary, and attempted assassin Hirsh Lekert was executed by being shot, but at page 316 he was hanged.… (lisätietoja)

This book takes the incredibly interesting approach of following the language of a wandering people in order to study where they went, how it affected them, and the effects of the places they went on the language they spoke.

Throughout history the Jews have been a diaspora nation – that is, they have been scattered throughout the world, considering themselves to be in exile from “the Promised Land.” Their “language chain” (comprised of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish) achieved vitality “by combining elements of the previous inherited language with the surrounding non-Jewish language.” Katz observes of Yiddish, “It is a language whose everyday words, naturally spoken, continue to burn with ancient ideas, humor, and psychic content that have come down the line of generation-to-generation language transmission, from antiquity into the twenty-first century.”

The vocabulary of Yiddish uniquely illuminated, as Primo Levi wrote, the disparity between the “divine vocation [of the Jews] and the daily misery of existence. … The Jewish people, after the dispersion, have lived this conflict for a long time and dolorously, and have drawn from it, side by side with its wisdom, also its laughter.”

Katz first takes us on a history of the beginnings of Yiddish – a very interesting journey. It starts with Hebrew, which was a fusion of Aramaic and Canaanite, reflecting the composition of the tribes that came together in Israel. Sometime after the first Diaspora of Jews (eviction from Israel) in 586 B.C., Hebrew split from Aramaic. Jewish religious documents also separated linguistically: the Mishna (law) was written in Hebrew and the Talmud (textual analysis) was written in Aramaic. Jews at that time still resided in the Near East: Babylonia, Persia, and Greece, followed by Spain and Portugal.

After the seventh-century rise of Islam, it wasn’t long before persecution sent Jews on the move again, this time to European lands. The Jews in German-speaking Europe became known as the Ashkenazim, and they were the creators of Yiddish. (The Jews who stayed in Spain and Portugal were the Sephardim.) This new language fused Jewish Aramaic (itself containing some Hebrew) with medieval German dialects. The language of Ashkenaz became known over time as “yidish” or Yiddish- which means “Jewish.”

Because many men spent the day studying the Mishna and the Talmud but the women did not, Yiddish became known as the language of women (a derogatory denotation). But the women, who were the caretakers, brought their children up to speak this language as well, making it the “mama-loschen” (both literally and figuratively, the mother tongue).

When the Crusades began in Western Europe, the butchery of Jews took on new life, and the Jews again moved, this time to Eastern Europe. Ironically, although East Europe was more backward, its very backwardness (including adherence to paganism and late arrival to Christianity) made it a safer haven for Jews. Katz notes “The promises of physical safety and economic freedom stimulated a massive eastward exodus” with Poland at the center. Once again Yiddish was transformed as Slavic words were added to the language. A dialectical divide also developed, as pronunciation in the south of Europe became different than that in the north.

The Enlightenment brought more change to the Jewish community. German Jews wanted the opportunity to advance in society, which meant disavowing their Jewish roots and either opting for secularization or converting outright to Christianity. [Neither route saved them in the end from the Nazi machine.] These maskilim (enlightened men) “made eradication of Yiddish a primary platform of their program.” They even pressured the government to make German mandatory for legal transactions.

Later, when Jews sought protection in Palestine even before the Holocaust, these Jews too rejected Yiddish as a language indicative of “weakness.” There were actually gangs of Jews in Palestine who beat up those who persisted in speaking Yiddish instead of using Hebrew as an everyday language.

There were two other significant causes of attrition of Yiddish speakers. One was of course the Holocaust itself, in which more than six million Jews perished. The second was the attack on Jews by Stalin’s Soviet regime, during which every single Yiddish writer was murdered.

The final assault on Yiddish is going on around us today: the quest for modernization and the desire for dissociation with “the funny, poor immigrants” and the victims of the Holocaust. Today, Yiddish is mostly spoken only among the Ultraorthodox Jews, who also have the largest reproduction rate of any Jewish group. But these Haredim reject many types of literature and art outside of religion as frivolous, and it is unknown what the ultimate fate of Yiddish will be.

Katz’s book is full of many more interesting stories about the development of the language and the men and women who played a critical role in bringing it about. His research on the language is impressive and his love for the language is obvious. His optimism seems to come from the very language itself: in all the years of pogroms, burnings, ghettoization, massacres, bloodbaths, and discriminatory legislation, the Yiddish language retains a large number of words, concepts, and sayings related to hope and to humor.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in tracing the history of a people through their language; for anyone interested in the rise and fall of the Yiddish language; and for anyone interested in a good story about a literary niche that was once vibrant and vital, and now is almost disappeared.… (lisätietoja)