Forum heralds teaching Yiddish

Speaking to an audience that displayed emotions ranging from sentimental tears to uproarious laughter, Folklore Professor Dan Ben-Amos led the Kutchin Conference in Yiddish last night. The discussion, "Yiddish in the University," focused on the importance of Yiddish instruction in schools and universities as an indispensable asset to scholars of Jewish culture. After Ben-Amos received both applause and laughter for choosing to introduce the panel's first speaker in Yiddish rather than "that other" Jewish language, Yiddish lecturer Kathryn Hellerstein began the discussion. Hellerstein spoke of the difficulties modern Yiddish scholars face because of the lack of exposure to Yiddish in its native form. She termed this a "strange scenario" and called for the University to make connections between Yiddish and related subjects such as Germanic languages and literature. The next speaker, Rakhmiel Peltz of Columbia University's Center for Judaic Studies, also stressed the importance of university programs specifically geared to Yiddish culture. Peltz elicited the most emotional response of the night when he discussed the nationalistic goals of much Yiddish literature, adding that much of the recent interest in Yiddish works is a response to the sadness and responsibility many Jews continue to feel towards the horrors of the Holocaust. After Penn Linguistics Professor Ellen Prince focused on language's more technical aspects, Columbia Professor Jeffrey Shandler answered what is often the most difficult question posed to those who advocate studying Yiddish: "Why learn a second Jewish language?" Shandler described Yiddish as "the vestige of an old culture" which the present culture cannot disregard. The final speaker of the night, Lehigh University Professor Chava Weissler, told an astounded audience that her students had barely heard of Yiddish. After a member of the audience asked Weissler how to remedy such a lack of cultural awareness, she said "a point of contact between a student's world and Yiddish culture must be found." Following each speaker's individual lectures, they were called to respond to audience questions during a panel discussion. Herbert Rosenblum, a Philadelphia resident who was one of the most vocal members of the audience, told Hellerstein that she "scared the hell out of him" by dismissing the assimilation of Yiddish-speaking peoples into the wider Jewish-American lifestyle as unimportant. Hellerstein responded, however, by saying that she did not intend to dismiss this process of assimilation at all -- and was actually reaffirming its critical importance to the survival of Yiddish culture.