Yiddish language instruction

[Sarah Bunin Benor]

Dear JL list,
In this era of budget cuts, it seems that Jewish languages are, unfortunately, on the chopping block. See this article on Yiddish at the University of Maryland. We wish list member Miriam Isaacs <mis...@umd.edu> the best during this uncertain time.
Sarah

11/25/09
http://washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=11842&SectionID=4&SubSectionID=&S=1

>   A shandah in the making?
>   Yiddish faces uncertain future at U.Md., JCCGW
>   by Richard Greenberg
>   Associate Editor, Washington Jewish Week
>
>   "Yiddish has not yet said its last word" ----Author
>   Isaac Bashevis Singer, upon receiving the Nobel
>   Prize for Literature in 1978 for his writings in
>   Yiddish
>
>   Isaac Bashevis Singer is no doubt spinning in his
>   grave, according to Washington-area Yiddishists, who
>   fear that the language they love is facing an
>   existential crisis locally.
>
>   Nu, what's new about that? The onetime daily
>   vernacular of Ashkenazic Jewry has been on life
>   support for eons, the victim of Adolf Hitler, Josef
>   Stalin, the rise of Zionism and modern Hebrew, the
>   dying off of native Yiddish speakers and wholesale
>   assimilation.
>
>   Among its main surviving outposts are fervently
>   Orthodox communities in Israel and North America,
>   where it remains the language of everyday life, and
>   a handful of universities, where it endures on a
>   much smaller scale as a tool for Jewish scholarship
>   and a nostalgic link for students to a bygone
>   civilization.
>
>   The University of Maryland has been one such bastion
>   for the past 30 years -- but perhaps not for much
>   longer. Due to severe budgetary constraints, U.Md.
>   may be forced to discontinue Yiddish classes by the
>   2010 academic year.
>
>   Several students and other area Yiddishists regard
>   that prospect as a full-blown shandah ----a Yiddish
>   term that evokes shame, scandal and embarrassment.
>
>   "It's sad; I'm very upset to hear that it might be
>   cut," said Miriam Friedman, 20, one of a small group
>   of Yiddish-language students at the College Park
>   campus. A sophomore who has yet to declare a major,
>   Friedman said she is studying Yiddish in an effort
>   to preserve the language. "It's like a rock in our
>   history. Yiddish is such a huge part of Ashkenazic
>   tradition."
>
>   If Yiddish is canceled, "the whole notion that it
>   ever existed, that it ever counted for anything,
>   goes poof," added Miriam Isaacs, the sole Yiddish
>   instructor at Maryland for the past 15 years, whose
>   job is imperiled. "It's part of a general attitude,
>   that Yiddish is not prestigious, not important, that
>   it's always marginal."
>
>   The Rockville-based organization Yiddish of Greater
>   Washington has launched a letter-writing campaign to
>   save the mamaloshen (literally, the "mother's
>   tongue") at Maryland, where it is offered to
>   undergraduates through the school's Meyerhoff Center
>   for Jewish Studies. For most of the past 30 years,
>   according to YGW, the university's classes have been
>   the only college-level Yiddish courses offered in
>   all of Maryland and within a radius of at least 100
>   miles.
>
>   "Think about the signal this sends," said YGW's
>   president Harvey Spriro, 58, a Vienna resident who
>   works for the federal government. He grew up in an
>   English-speaking household in New York where all the
>   adults nevertheless could speak or understand
>   Yiddish with varying degrees of proficiency.
>   "Meyerhoff is the nexus of Jewish studies, and if
>   they say can't afford it, it signals that Yiddish is
>   not important. That's wrong and historically cruel."
>
>   Yiddish, which is generally believed to be about
>   1,100 years old, was the primary language spoken by
>   three-quarters of the world's Jews -- some 11
>   million people -- on the eve of the Holocaust, which
>   wiped out roughly half of all Yiddish speakers.
>
>   It's unclear how many people converse in the
>   language today, although one estimate puts it at
>   about a half-million worldwide. Some scholars
>   believe that the decline in number of Yiddish
>   speakers has slowed or even stopped recently due to
>   sporadic revivals, but they rule out the possibility
>   that the language will ever again become the lingua
>   franca of the Jews.
>
>   The size of the Yiddish-speaking population in the
>   Washington area is unknown, but it is tiny compared
>   to that in the New York area, the main redoubt of
>   mamaloshen in North America. YGW, which was created
>   in the mid-1970s to help perpetuate Yiddish language
>   and culture locally, has about 200-300 dues-paying
>   members, both secularists and religious Jews, whose
>   average age is about 65-70, according to Jonathan
>   Sunshine, former president of YGW.
>
>   "Another crisis in Yiddish in our area," according
>   to a recent YGW mailing, has been spawned by the
>   budget crunch at the Jewish Community Center of
>   Greater Washington in Rockville, which has offered
>   Yiddish programing for more than 30 years.
>
>   Buffeted by financial difficulties, the JCCGW has
>   asked YGW to cover a greater share of the costs for
>   the organization's Cafe Kasrilevke cultural
>   initiative and its Yiddish lecture series, but YGW
>   vice president Jim Feldman said that increased
>   outlay "could force us to discontinue" Cafe
>   Kasrileveke and perhaps the lectures. Neither have
>   been offered this fall due to the situation, but
>   negotiations are ongoing.
>
>   "We're trying to figure out how to meet their needs
>   so the JCC can continue to have Yiddish programming,
>   and also meet our needs so we're not underwriting
>   costs of YGW's programs," said JCCGW chief executive
>   officer Michael Feinstein. The JCCGW is also the
>   site of a small Yiddish language class.
>
>   Meyerhoff Center director Hayim Lapin, who grew up
>   in a Yiddish-speaking home, said, "I am as upset"
>   over the possible loss of Yiddish at U.Md. "as some
>   of the people who are writing me."
>
>   There is a significant demand on campus for Yiddish
>   classes, particularly in the fall semester, when it
>   has generally drawn 18 students, according to Isaacs
>   and others. But demand typically drops off in the
>   spring semester for several reasons. One is that
>   students majoring in Jewish studies must be
>   proficient in third-year Hebrew, which means most of
>   them must take three full years of that language.
>   Yiddish is not offered as a substitute language.
>
>   "Unless you're a real linguistics junkie, that
>   doesn't leave much time for Yiddish," said Sunshine,
>   65, an economist who lives in Chevy Chase and grew
>   up in a mostly English-speaking home in Cleveland.
>   "This tends to undermine Yiddish."
>
>   Lapin said the sometimes sluggish demand for Yiddish
>   instruction is a factor in the tentative decision to
>   eliminate the language at U.Md., "but it is not the
>   principal factor." Rather, he explained in a recent
>   e-mail to Sunshine, he has been forced to make
>   "anticipatory cuts" in programs across the board
>   "wherever I have the leeway to make them. This is no
>   more than bitter consolation, I suppose, but there
>   was no specific singling out of Yiddish or of Miriam
>   Isaacs."
>
>   He declined to say what cost savings would be
>   associated with the cuts.
>
>   In a subsequent interview, Lapin said he is looking
>   for a "creative approaches" that may perpetuate some
>   form of Yiddish instruction at U.Md., such as
>   partnerships with other schools, on-campus
>   cost-sharing arrangements and contributions from
>   community sources.
>
>   "How can you have a Jewish studies program," he
>   said, "and not have Yiddish?"