Yiddish: the language, customs, culture & history

Cultural Judaism is permanently evolving. The customs, philosophies and languages have the most. The Jews have constantly been on the move for the past 2000 years of diaspora. In 70AD when the Second Temple was destroyed the Jews went into a diaspora that would last for many millennia. The majority spread around the Mediterranean and in Babylon in modern-day Iraq (this is where they flourished for almost 500 years in what is known as the Talmudic period). Here they exhaustively annotated and studied the oral-Torah (Mishnah) until it became the Talmud which is recognised as the definitive code of Jewish law. Many Jews were enslaved and sold around the Empire however, the rest of the free Jews went to main-land Italy and Rome itself. Here, they were largely merchants and eventually spread out across the Empire. Their main language was Aramaic which had evolved before "Modern Jewish-History". The Jews were taken too Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in August 586BC. With them, they took their language of Ancient Hebrew which gradually mixed with Babylonian too form Amaraic (This is the language of the Talmud). Aramaic is probably one of the longest surviving religions in the world due to the extensive study of the Talmud. Every day, especially in Israel millions of Jews open an un-translated Talmud and study it. They need too translate it to their respective languages and require a basic knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and structural elements of the language. Although it is not spoken, many people can still understand Aramaic. In addition, numerous "Talmud dictionaries" have been published. In essence they are dictionaries containing high-frequency Aramaic words that regularly come up in the Talmud. This was used by the first group of Babylonian* Jews until what is known as "The Return to Zion" in 538 when the Persian emperor Cyrus adopted a policy allowing his peoples to practice their respective religions. This allowed the Jews to return too Jerusalem which most did over a course of time. The Jews largely succeeded in Babylon but they weren't there long enough to really achieve anything great however,this was the period when Emperor Xerxes (who most famously attempted to attempt Greece & was defeated at Salamis by the Greek navy) was saved from assassination by Mordechai and Haman attempted to have all of Babylon's Jews executed. He narrowly succeeded but was stopped by Esther, one of Xerxes' Jewish wives who was also Mordechai's niece. To celebrate ousting Haman the Jewish festival of Purim came about.

After the fall of the Second Temple the Babylonian Jews further developed Aramaic. After around 500 years they gradually left Babylon to areas around the Western Roman Empire (which had already fallen in 476AD-the Eastern or Byzantine Empire would last another 1000, its' capital being modern day Istanbul that was taken in 1453 by the Ottomans): mainly Spain, France, the Alsace region (the term for someone who originated in Alsace is Alsatian) and Italy. From there they spread out over a period of 600 years to where most Jews lived before the Holocaust.

Some of the French and Alsatian Jews moved east into Germany where they prospered for over 1000 years. Until then they had spoken Hebrew but German words were gradually added to it until a new language formed-Yiddish. Yiddish is not just part of Jewish culture-it has one of its' own. Yiddish was originally medieval German with elements of Hebrew. A Yiddish-speaker can understand and communicate with a German. In the Holocaust, many people could survive as they understand the orders barked at them in German requesting skilled workers for example as they grew up speaking Yiddish. When the German Jews began moving further east into Russia, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine Yiddish picked up some Slavic elements as well. Yiddish was the language mainly spoken by the religious east-European Jews in the Schtetls and ghettos. When the pogroms began in the 1880s they immigrated too America and the UK. They bought Yiddish there as well. Yiddish has made little impact on English but much on American. As a result schlep, kvetch and insults such as schmuck and putz have proliferated there way into American language. The British Jews mainly went too the East End of London where culture blossomed. There were Yiddish theatres, bookshops and libraries. Even community posters were written in it. The East End was severely damaged during the Blitz and many of the Jews moved north to Edgware, Hendon, Golders Green, Mill Hill and later Borehamwood. When they moved away from the East End (where many had lived in poverty) the became richer and soon lost many of their older traditions including Yiddish however, in some extremely Orthodox schools pupils are taught Yiddish to a conversational level and give Torah speeches in it.

In Jerusalem there is a radical Chasidic group called Neturei Karta. They are
ultra-orthodox and believe that the state of Israel should not exist until the Messiah arrives. They acknowledge that our Israel is the Holy Land but their "Palestine" shouldn't be the Jewish state. Another of their beliefs that ties directly to this article is they regard Hebrew as being too holy a language to speak on an every-day basis (excluding prayer and study) so they use Yiddish instead. Yiddish can be heard spoken wherever there is a Neturei Karta community whether in Manchester, New York or Jerusalem. Incidentally, the UK head of Neturei Karta; Rabbi Ahron Cohen (who at the time that this articles was written lived in Manchester) attended a Holocaust denial conference in Tehran where he was photographed embracing the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a known anti-Semite. For this he was ex-communiicated from British Jewry.

*Babylon was conquered by the Persians in 539BC but Jews who lived there are still "Babylonian"