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Continued from Page 2

532 9615

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Yiddish

they affectionately called
the mame - loshn, or "mother
tongue," the everyday lan-
guage of the home, the
school, and the mar-
ketplace.
Yiddish has demonstrably
fallen on hard times, for since
it reached its greatest heights
immediately before the Second
World War, it has been on a
steady decline. The atrocities
of Hitler's campaign to annihi-
late Europe's Jewish popula-
tion which eventually resulted
in the murder of six million
Jews, government endorsed
anti-Semitism in the Soviet
Union, the single European
country with a large Jewish
population that survived the
Holocaust, and the gradual
tide of cultural assimilation of
Jews thoughout the Western
Hemisphere into host societies
that emphasized their own na-
tive languages and cultures,
have all been heavy blows to
the life of Yiddish. Even in the
Jewish homeland of Israel,
where much of the population
at one time was Yiddish-
speaking, the established lan-
guage is Hebrew and Yiddish
is considered to be somewhat of
an anachronism.
Before writing off the survi-
val of Yiddish, however, one
must be cautious. There are
still Jewish fraternal groups
that propagate and nourish an
interest in Yiddish; prestigious
colleges and universities are
giving courses in Yiddish lan-
guage and literature, and
Jewish children, especially in
the Northeast, can attend Yid-
dish schools and camps; there
are pockets of ultra-orthodox
Jews throughout the world
that use Yiddish as their nor-
mal mode of discourse; and, fi-

naily, there is a coterie of Yid-
dishists in countries as far
apart culturally and geograph-
ically as America and the
Soviet Union who are keeping
alive the literary traditions of
the mame-loshen by reading
Yiddish newspapers, maga-
zines, and journals. On a
popular level, moreover,
Yiddish has been steadily
creeping into the
mainstream of American
culture where it has found a
wide acceptance.
Such is the acclaim for
Mame-Loshen, the salute with
which the authors of the new
dictionary treat Yiddish with
deep respect.
The new lexicon will surely
serve well the cause of keeping
Yiddish active in many quar-
ters. In the Detroit Jewish
community a dedicated couple,
Sarah and Morris Friedman,
are adding immensely toward
that cause, with their sponsor-
ship of a Bar-Ilan University
chair for the training of Yid-
dish teachers and the
encouragement they are giv-
ing as promoters of annual lec-
ture series in Yiddish and re-
lated cultural needs.
Schocken Books is adding to
the increasing interest in Yid-
dish with the announcement of
the introduction this coming
June of a "treasury of Yiddish
classics." It will begin with
Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the
Dairy Man and The Railroad
Story. The new series will in-
clude the works of I. L. Peretz,
Mendele Moher Seforim and S.
Anski.
That's how Mame-Loshen
will be kept alive. The lexicon
by Herman Galvin and Stan
Tamarkin contributes im-
mensely toward that goal.

Fear Not

Continued from Page 2

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22

Friday, January 2, 1987

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

tion of the Nobel Peace Prize to
Eliezer Wiesel, in Oslo, on Dec.
10. In his description of the im-
pressive presentation cere-
monies in the Dec. 11 New
York Times, Francis X. Clines
called attention to the follow-
ing:
In a coincidence that
could stoke despair as eas-
ily as optimism, Mr Weisel
was honored 50 years after
the peace prize was
awarded to Carl von Os-
sietzky, the German pacifist
who enraged Hitler and the
Nazis with his apocalyptic
warnings about their de-
veloping evil. Some moder-
ates of that day criticized
the award as a "direct rovo-
cation of the German gov-
ernment," said Egil Aarvik,
the chairman of the Norwe-
gian Nobel Committee.
"Leading figures in politics
and the press expressed the
opinion that Ossietzky was too
extreme in his warnings and
revelations," Mr. Aarvick said,
shaking his fist as though such
an appalling prospect were
timeless.

"His testimony was, how-
ever, also his doom," he added,
noting that the outspoken
laureate did not survive as the
world indulged "unsuspicious
ambivalence" through the
formative years of Nazism.
As a bridge to the memory of
Ossietzky, Mr. Aarvik quoted
Elie Wiesel: "I will conquer our
murderers by attempting to re-
construct what they de-
stroyed."
The Ossietzky story is un-
forgettable and inerasable
from historic records. It is one
of the most notable lessons for
peoples in time of great danger,
as Ossietzky's fellow Germans
were in those tragic years, not
to panic, not to fear. When
more people form a unity of
spirit and action and create a
society that defies bestialities
like the Hitler-inspired, there
is a better chance to overcome
the bestialities.
This is easier said than done.
How could the defenseless
Jews under Nazism battle the
enemy during horrifying times
when the beasts were over-
whelming in numbers and

