Yiddish in Israel : a history /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Rojanski, Rachel, author.
Imprint:Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2020]
©2020
Description:xiii, 319 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language:English
Subject:Yiddish language -- Israel -- History.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12033420
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:0253045150
9780253045157
9780253045140
0253045142
Notes:Includes index and bibliographical references.
Summary:Yiddish in Israel challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language's varyfortunerute through the years was shaped by social and political developments and the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financinterestsrsts all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers , and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel's early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel's leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally, Rojanski follows Yiddish into the 21st century, telling the story of the reviinteresterst in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.

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