Yiddish acted as the cement that bound the Jewish community together on a socialist foundation. What language we spoke was critica...l. It reflected our identity, our loyalty, our distinctness not only from the gentile environment, but from other Jews as well. The use of Yiddish was an expression not only of love of a language, but of pride in ourselves as a people; it was an acknowledgement of a historical and cultural yerushe, heritage, a link to generations of Jews who came before and to the political activists of Eastern Europe. Above all it was the symbol of resistance to assimilation, an insistence on remaining who we were.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...when I have formed the sounds, said the words out loud, those who had assumed Yiddish was a language of the past only, suddenly... felt it had been revived. As my tongue, mouth, lips, throat, lungs physically pushed Yiddish into the world--as I, a Jew, spoke a Jewish language to other Jews--Yiddish was very much alive. Not unlike a lebn geblibene, a survivor, of an overwhelming catastrophe, it seemed to be saying 'khbin nisht vos ikh bin amol geven. I am not what I once was. Ober 'khbin nisht geshtorbn. Ikh leb. But I did not die. I live.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »