Yiddish in Israeli Cinema

While American Yiddish cinema had grown from the desire to profit from the presence of a large Yiddish-speaking audience, Yiddish speakers in Israel never established a Yiddish cinema because of Zionist opposition to the Yiddish language. Yiddish, therefore, found its way into Israeli films only when the ideological and financial involvement of government in the national cinema lessened. In such a context, Yiddish has come to serve the function of establishing for Hebrew a diglossia the division of a language into high and low by being the language of humor, debunking, and ideologic compromise, of humility, emotion, and private experience, setting itself in contrast to the lofty and often abstract ideals expressed by Zionist melitsah (high style).