"Critical Post-Judaism"; or, Reinventing a Yiddish Sensibility in a Postmodern Age

Diaspora 6:1 1997 "Critical Post-Judaism"; or, Reinventing a Yiddish Sensibility in a Postmodern Age Noah Isenberg Wesleyan University Thinking in Jewish. Jonathan Boyarín. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 'You begin to come quite close to Yiddish ifyou bear in mind that apart from what you know there are active in yourselves forces and associations with forces that enable you to understand Yiddish intuitively. " —Franz Kafka, "An Introductory Talk on the Yiddish Language" (1912) Within months of each other, two articles on Yiddish language and culture appeared in the public press during the summer of 1996. First, in the pages of The New Republic, Harvard's chair of Yiddish Studies, Ruth Wisse, addressed the question of a Yiddish revival in a skeptical, even pessimistic, piece titled "Shul Daze: Is Yiddish Back from the Dead?" Wisse contends that Yiddish no longer has any validity as a vital cultural idiom, and that as it currently exists, in its secular incarnation, it can only be viewed as an object of academic inquiry. She writes ofmisplaced hopes among various journalists, who call on her for expert confirmation that we are now witnessing a renaissance of this otherwise near-extinct language. Such journalists, explains Wisse, often mention the National Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts, the Yiddish film retrospectives currently en vogue at urban arts houses, and the international boom in Klezmer music. "I am tempted to tell my callers what they want to hear," remarks Wisse, "yes, because my students can now study Sholem Aleichem in the original and write Yiddish letters to their grandparents—make that their bobbes and zeydes—a Yiddish renaissance is in the offing. But the reference to my academic post reminds me that I'm not paid to lie" (Wisse 17). Yet perhaps it isn't really a lie that Wisse is being asked to tell after all. At least, that is what the Forward's cultural editor Jonathan Rosen would like us to believe. In his "A Dead Language, Yiddish Lives," published in The New York Times Magazine, Rosen Diaspora 6:1 1997 calls attention to the fact that Yiddish, though still largely considered a ghostly remnant of the past, a leftover from the turn-ofthe -century migrations of Jews from Eastern Europe, is now experiencing a new life among younger Jews in the American diaspora, in particular among those searching for a source of identification beyond the Holocaust and the establishment of the Jewish state. Rosen cites renowned playwright Tony Kushner, who expresses equal disappointment with the state ofIsrael and melting pot America and, in comparison, views Yiddish culture as "less butch and macho" than Israeli culture; together with other Jews of his generation, Kushner claims that through Yiddish he is "reawakening to Diaspora culture" (Rosen 26). Rosen observes that a growing segment ofgay Jews (the Yiddish equivalent to the Act Up slogan, "shvaygen=toyt"—also the title of a Klezmatics record album—adorns a t-shirt in the article's accompanying illustration) have taken to a redefined Yiddishkeit. In recent years, Rosen suggests, diversity has replaced assimilation as an American goal, and in this climate Yiddish may have the chance to flourish again. For Rosen, Yiddish is the language which best represents what he calls "the paradox of the American diaspora: the wish to feel different and at home" (27). While it may be difficult to say for certain whether we are witnessing a renaissance in Yiddish culture, there are indicators, both within and outside the academy, that Yiddish is being talked about, written on, studied, and debated. At the 1996 annual meeting ofthe Association for Jewish Studies (A.J.S.) in Boston, an entire session was conducted in Yiddish; speakers were introduced, papers delivered , and questions posed and answered, all in Yiddish. As may come as a surprise to some, this academic forum was not attended by bobbes and zeydes, but rather mainly by young students and scholars ofYiddish. Moderated by Wisse herself, the panel included scholars from the United States, Israel, and Europe. In a telling moment during the session, a young man in his twenties stood up and fired a sharp question in impeccable Yiddish. As it turns out, he is...