That Which Can Never Be Lost: Reflections On a Theme
Published in Issue #25 subscribe to unlock the full story1 Why Yiddish, my brethren?
As a child, I expressed myself best in Yiddish, long before I could speak English (my adopted tongue), French (my maternal language, spoken by my father) or Hebrew (learned later in school). Yet for years and years I could not grasp (though kept to myself) why my parents — one French, the other German (each a survivor of the Khurbin) — would send me to a wholly Yiddish school, from inception through Grade Two, leaving me unable to communicate properly with my Gentile and/or secular street-friends and perceptibly unequipped to integrate into local “society.” The language of teaching was strictly Yiddish, in a Bundist curriculum, immersed in that tinge of sadness/depression one sensed intuitively (and compounded with much screaming and a fair dose of corporeal punishment).
By the time I was in Grade Two, my mother realized that her child could not very well engage with the world that had ostensibly left Echad Ha’am behind in the ashes of despair. Accordingly, she wanted to enroll me in the then best Jewish school in the city, wherein every secular study was taught in English, along with a full slate of religious studies taught in Hebrew. As I spoke barely a word of Hebrew, other than a limited vocabulary pulled from Torah and pronounced with Yiddish inflection, there came the inevitable interview with the principal.
I’m sitting across from the principal, my mother next to me, when he asks me to recount the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent. So, I start: “Iz geven amol in gan eyden a shlang vos hot gevolt arimtsedreyin odom un chava” (There was once a snake in the Garden of Eden which wanted to confuse Adam and Eve). The principal immediately interrupted me to insist that I: “dertseil di mayseh in hebreyish” (Tell the story in Hebrew). I tried and tried, desperately, to the point of tears, but the words just were not there. In frustration, I finally asked the man why I could not continue in Yiddish, “di mame-loshen fin yidn” (the mother-tongue of Jews). I will remember his words to my dying day: “Mir hobn zich yetz tzurik gekimen auf unzere stat in eretz yisroel — di eintsegeh shprakh fin modernishe yidn itst is hebreyish” (We have returned to our homeland, Israel. Hebrew is now the only language of contemporary Jewry). My poor mother, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, asked to speak to him alone for two minutes, which was arranged with my leaving the room.
On my return, the principal, himself wiping away tears, asked me to continue the Bible tale, speaking from the heart and with whatever Hebrew I could interject, which I did. “Der shlang hot gefregt fin chava” (The snake asked Eve), etc. Throughout, and to my confusion, the principal went from mewling to bawling, heaving while waving me on with his handkerchief. When I had finished, he turned to my mother and said: “Keep your promise, and I will register your child in September on a trial basis.” I later graduated from his Hebrew high school.
Years later, I asked my mother what she’d...
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