The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century

by Leo Wiener

There is no linguistic norm in the language as now used for literary purposes. The greater number of the best authors write in slightly varying dialects of Volhynia; but the Lithuanian variety is also well represented, and of late Perez has begun to write in his Polish vernacular.[20] German influence began to show itself early, and it affected not only the spelling, but also the vocabulary of the early writers in Lithuania. Dick looked upon Judeo-German only as a means to lead his people to German culture, and his stories are written in a curious mixture in which German at times predominates. This evil practice, which in Dick may be excused on the ground that it served him only as a means to an end, has come to be a mannerism in writers of the lower kind, such as Schaikewitsch, Seiffert, and their like. The scribblers of that class have not only corrupted the literature but also the language of the Jews.

Various means have been suggested by the writers for the enrichment of the Judeo-German vocabulary. Some lovers of Hebrew have had the bad taste to propose the formation of all new words on a Semitic basis, and have actually brought forth literary productions in that hybrid language. Others again have advised the introduction of all foreign words commonly in use among other nations. But the classical writers, among whom Abramowitsch is foremost, have not stopped to consider what would be the best expedient, but have coined words in conformity with the spirit of their dialect, steering a middle course between the extremes suggested by others. In America, where the majority of the writers knew more of German than their native vernacular, the literary dialect has come to resemble the literary German, and the English environment has caused the infusion of a number of English terms for familiar objects. But on the whole the language of the better writers differs in America but little from that of their former home. There is, naturally, a large divergence to be found in the language, which ranges from the almost pure German of the prayers and, in modern times, of the poems of Winchevsky, to the language abounding in Russicisms of Dlugatsch, and in Hebraisms of Linetzki, from the pure dialects of the best writers to the corrupt forms of Dick and Meisach, and the even worse Jargon of Seiffert, but in all these there is no greater variety than is to be found in all newly formed languages.[21] The most recent example of such variety is furnished by the Bulgarian, where the writers of the last fifty years have wavered between the native dialects with their large elements of Turkish and Greek origin, a purified form of the same, from which the foreign infection has been eliminated, approaches to the Old Slavic of a thousand years ago, and, within the last few years, a curious mixture with the literary Russian. Judeo-German not only does not suffer by such a comparison, but really gains by it, for all the best writers have uniformly based their diction on their native dialects.

In former days Judeo-German was known only by the name of Iwre-teutsch, or Jüdisch-teutsch. Frequently such words were used as Mame-loschen (Mother-tongue), or Prost-jüdisch (Simple Yiddish), but through the efforts of the disciples of the Haskala (Reform), the designation of Jargon has been forced upon it; and that appellation has been adopted by later writers in Russia, so that now one generally finds only this latter form as the name of the language used by the writers in Russia. The people, however, speak of their vernacular as Jüdisch, and this has given rise in England and America to the word Yiddish for both the spoken and written form. It is interesting to note that originally the name had been merely Teutsch for the language of the Jews, for they were conscious of their participation with the Germans in a common inheritance. Reminiscences of that old designation are left in such words as verteutschen, 'to translate,' i.e. to do into German, and steutsch, 'how do you mean it?' contracted from is teutsch? 'how is that in German?'

The main differences between Judeo-German[22] and the mother-tongue are these: its vocalism has undergone considerable change, varying from locality to locality; the German unaccented final e has, as in other dialects of German, disappeared; in declensional forms, the genitive has almost entirely disappeared, while in the Lithuanian group the dative has also coincided with the accusative; in the verb, Judeo-German has lost almost entirely the imperfect tense; the order of words is more like the English than the German. These are all developments for which parallels can be adduced from the region of Frankfurt. Judeo-German is, consequently, not an anomaly, but a natural development.

III. FOLKLORE

THERE can be no doubt that the Jews were the most potent factors in the dissemination of folk-literature in the Middle Ages.[23] Various causes united to make them the natural carriers of folklore from the East to the West, and from the West back again to the East. They never became so completely localized as to break away from the community of their brethren in distant lands, and to develop distinct national characteristics. The Jews of Spain stood in direct relations with the Khazars of Russia, and it was a Jew whom Charlemagne sent as ambassador to Bagdad. The Jewish merchant did not limit his sphere of action by geographical lines of demarkation, and the Jewish scholar was as much at home in Italy and Germany as he was in Russia or Egypt. Again and again, in reading the biographies of Jewish worthies, we are confronted with men who have had their temporary homes in three continents. In fact, the stay-at-homes were the exception rather than the rule in the Middle Ages. In this manner not only a lively intercourse was kept up among the Jews of the diaspora, but they unwittingly became also the mediators of the intellectual life of the most remote lands: they not only enriched the literatures of the various nations by new kinds of compositions, but also brought with them the substratum of that intellectual life which finds its expression in the creations of the popular literature.

The Jews have always possessed an innate love for story telling which was only sharpened by their travels. The religious and semi-religious stories were far from sufficient to satisfy their curiosity, and in spite of the discussions by the Rabbis of the permissibility of reading foreign books of adventure, they proceeded to create and multiply an apocryphal and profane folk-literature which baffles the investigator with its variety. Most addicted to these stories were the women, who received but little learning in the language of their religious lore, and who knew just enough of their Hebrew characters to read in the vernacular books specially prepared for them. Times changed, and the education of the men varied with the progress of the Hebrew and the native literatures; but the times hardly made an impression on the female sex. The same minimum of ethical instruction was given them in the eighteenth century that they had received in the fourteenth, and they were left to shift for themselves in the selection of their profane reading matter. The men who condescended to write stories for them had no special interest to direct the taste of their public, and preferred to supply the demand rather than create it; nor did the publishers have any more urgent reason why they should trouble themselves about the production of new works as long as the old ones satisfied the women. Consequently, although now and then a 'new' story book saw daylight, the old ones were just as eagerly received by the feminine readers. And thus it happens that what was read with pleasure at its first appearance is accepted as eagerly to-day, and the books that were issued from the printing presses of the sixteenth century may be found in almost unchanged hundredth editions, except as to the language, printed in 1898 in Wilna or Warsaw.

Time and space are entirely annihilated in the folklore of the Russian Jews. Here one finds side by side the quaint stories of the Talmud of Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian origin, with the Polyphemus myth of the Greeks, the English 'Bevys of Hamptoun,' the Arabic 'Thousand and One Nights.' Stories in which half a dozen motives from various separate tales have been moulded into one harmonious whole jostle with those that show unmistakable signs of venerable antiquity. Nowhere else can such a variety of tales be found as in Judeo-German; nor is there any need, as in other literatures, to have recourse to collections of the diligent searcher; one will find hundreds of them, nay thousands, told without any conscious purpose in the chapbooks that are annually issued at Wilna, Lemberg, Lublin, and other places. Add to these the many unwritten tales that involve the superstitions and beliefs of a more local character, in which the Slavic element has been superadded to the Germanic base, and the wealth of this long-neglected literature will at once become apparent to the most superficial observer.[24]

These stories have dominated and still dominate the minds of the women and children among the Russian, Roumanian, and Galician Jews. For them there exists a whole fantastic world, with its objects of fear and admiration. There is not an act they perform that is not followed by endless superstitious rites, in which the beliefs of Chaldea are inextricably mixed with French, Germanic, or Slavic ceremonies. To pierce the dense cloud of superstition that has involved the Mosaic Law, to disentangle the ancient religion from the rank growth of the ages, to open the eyes of the Jews to the realities of this world, and to break down the timeless and spaceless sphere of their imaginings—that has been the task of the followers of the Mendelssohnian Reform for the last one hundred years. In the pages of the Judeo-German works that they have produced to take the place of the story books of long ago, one meets continually with lists of superstitions that they are laboring to combat, with the names of books that they would fain put in an index expurgatorius.