Jecke

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Jecke (also Jekke , anglicized spelling Yekke , singular: der Jecke , die Jeckete , plural: die Jeckes or Jekkes , adjective: Jeckisch ) is a slang term in the Yiddish language , especially for the German-speaking Jewish immigrants of the 1930s in Palestine and theirs Descendants in today's population of Israel . In addition, German-speaking Jews assimilated in Western Europe were occasionally called "Jecken", as a differentiation from the swear word "Polacken".

Judgmental connotations

It is a derisive foreign term that Jews from Eastern Europe who had already come to the country during previous immigration used to characterize newcomers from Germany and Austria from the point of view of their influence by German culture, and with which stereotypes such as arrogance, excessive correctness and thoroughness are then used and a lack of adaptation to the linguistic and cultural realities of their new environment. It was partly rejected as an insult by the "Jeckes" themselves, partly tolerated as a friendly, appreciative mockery and then increasingly adopted as a slightly ironic self-designation. Shlomo Erel also addresses this ambivalence, showing how much German Jews have become the subject of Jewish humor.

The designation, which was originally restricted to Jews from Germany and Austria, was subsequently extended to include immigrants from other Eastern and Central European countries, insofar as they felt connected to the German language and culture. This development is also reflected in the name of the immigrant association of German Olim , founded in 1932 by Felix Rosenblüth , among others , which initially used the name Hitachduth Olej Germania ( Hebrew הִתְאַחְדוּת עוֹלֵי גֶּרְמַנְיָה Hit'achdūt ʿŌlej Germanjah , German 'Vereinigung der Olim Deutschlands' ), then from 1940 as Hitachdut Olej Germania we Austria ( Hebrew הִתְאַחְדוּת עוֹלֵי גֶּרְמַנְיָה וְאוֹסְטְרִיָה Hit'achdūt ʿŌlej Germanjah we-Ōsṭrijah , German `` Association of Olim Germany and Austria '' ) also cited Austrian immigrants by name, before then starting in 1943, Irgun Olej Merkas Europe (אִרְגּוּן עוֹלֵי מֶרְכַּז אֵירוֹפָּה Irgūn ʿŌlej Merkaz Ejrōpah , German 'Organization of the Olim Central Europe' ) was called, which includes all areas of origin of Jewish German speakers.

etymology

The etymology of the word is not clear for sure. The derivation from the German word jacket , with which two different explanations are connected , is widespread . According to the one who first began to develop the word in Palestine, German immigrants should be meant as "jackets (wearers)" because they also work in the hot climate of their new homeland and in the physical work that many of them have given up on their previous ones had to exercise civil professions, attached importance to correct clothing and did not take off their jackets. According to the other, the jacket is meant as a mark of assimilation to non-Jewish Western European culture, by which it has already distinguished itself in Europe from the wearers of the traditional caftan , which has remained common especially among Eastern European and Orthodox Jews . In this respect, jecke , like a tie jew , would be a kind of counter-term to the word caftan jew , which was especially adapted and popularized through anti-Semitic usage.

According to another explanation, Jecke is instead derived from the Low German word Jeck (High German Geck ), "fool", which is well-known especially through the Cologne Carnival , which can be heard from the diminutive Jekl of the name Ja [n] kev ( Jakob ) should have crossed. In this case one would have to use the pejorative designations of Jewish persons as Yiddish Jekl , Jeklein , Jeke "(little) Jakob" for Jecke a word history that goes back to at least the 16th century.

In Hebrew , Jecke (יקה) is also jokingly resolved as an acronym for “jehudi kashe havanah” (“dumb Jew”).

Others

The educator Israel Shiloni (ישראל שילוני, Hans Herbert Hammerstein, 1901–1996), who came from a family of assimilated Berlin Jewry and had mainly worked in Frankfurt am Main, Bonn and Stettin before emigrating to Palestine, began in 1971 in Naharija to set up a museum on culture of German Jewry, whose collection he transferred to the industrialist Stef Wertheimer in 1992 and which has since found a new home in Wertheimer's "Tefen Open Museum" (see Tefen sculpture garden ) under the name Museum des Deutschsprachigen Judentums Tefen . Through a traveling exhibition, which the Tefener Museum in connection with the Berlin Centrum Judaicum for the first time in 2008 in Berlin under the title “Jeckes. The German-speaking Jews in Israel ”showed that the story of Shiloni's collection became known to a larger audience in Germany as well.

The short film Chaja & Mimi deals with the ambivalent relationship between two Jewish Israeli women of German origin and their hometown Berlin.

Quotes

“Every Aliyah (wave of immigration) had been smiled at a little because of their strange customs - but none more than those of the Jeckes . The German Jews were often the target of general ridicule. It took the adults a long time to master the Hebrew language to some extent, and they never got rid of their very strong German accent. But it wasn't just the language, it was also the tortuous courtesy of so well and strictly brought up people - men who lifted their hats when they said hello and the endless stream of 'thank you' and 'please'. The Eastern Europeans found this behavior ridiculous. "

- Leah Rabin : I continue on his way. P. 77.

“I'm just a pure jerk: if I say I'll be there at ten, I'll be there two minutes to ten. Sometimes I don't even want to be between the first ones, at a party or something, but I don't succeed. "

- Elisheva Adler, teacher from Haifa

“What is the difference between a Jecke and a Virgo? Jecke remains Jecke. "

- Jewish joke

See also

literature

  • José Brunner (Ed.): Germans in Palestine and Israel: everyday life, culture, politics . Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013
  • Gisela Dachs (Ed.): Jewish Almanach: Die Jeckes. Frankfurt am Main 2005.
  • Shlomo Erel (Ed.): Jeckes tell. From the life of German-speaking immigrants to Israel. 2nd Edition. LIT-Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7589-X . (= Edition Mnemosyne, 12)
  • Anath Feinberg: Jeckes. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 180-183.
  • Gideon Greif (Ed.): The Jeckes. German Jews from Israel tell. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-412-11599-1 .
  • Gideon Greif: The Jeckes. In: Hermann Zabel (Ed.): Voices from Jerusalem: on the German language and literature in Palestine - Israel. LIT-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9749-4 , pp. 59-83. (= German-Israeli library, 2)
  • Arndt Kremer: “ Explosive language? German in Palestine and Israel ”. In: From Politics and Contemporary History (APuZ), 6/2015, pp. 35–41.
  • Arndt Kremer: " Lost Spaces, lost in Space: Spatial memory and language attitudes of German-Jewish emigrants in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s". In Sabine Sander (Ed.): Language as Bridge and Border. Linguistic, Cultural, and Political Constellations in 18th to 20th Century German-Jewish Thought . Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin, pp. 155-175.
  • Klaus Kreppel : Israel's hard-working Jeckes. Twelve business portraits of German-speaking Jews from Nahariya. Westfalen Verlag, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-88918-101-5 .
  • Klaus Kreppel: Nahariyya - the village of the "Jeckes". The establishment of the middle class settlement for German immigrants in Eretz Israel in 1934/35. The Open Museum, Tefen 2005, ISBN 965-7301-01-7 .
  • Klaus Kreppel: Nahariyya and the German immigration to Eretz Israel. The history of its inhabitants from 1935 to 1941. The Open Museum, Tefen 2010, ISBN 978-965-7301-26-5 .
  • Gerda Luft : Contributor to Israel: The Jeckes. What Israel owes to the Jews from Germany , in: MERIAN Israel, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg, 1978, ISBN 3455278124

Web links

Wiktionary: Jecke  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shalom Ben-Chorin : In exile, the mother tongue becomes a protective wall. In: Peter Emil Nasarski (Ed.): Language as a home: Emigrants tell , Westkreuz Verlag, Berlin a. a. 1981, ISBN 3-922131-04-2 , p. 92 ff. (= Series of publications of the International Association of German-speaking Media , 2) again In: Schalom Ben-Chorin: Germania Hebraica: Contributions to the relationship between Germans and Jews. Bleicher, Gerlingen 1982, ISBN 3-88350-225-1 , pp. 50-54, tells of a trial in which the judge himself was sued against the showing of a film with what was perceived as offensive in the film title a Jecke allegedly rejected the lawsuit on the grounds that the word was not an insult, but an "honorary title", which he himself preferred to the "certainly correct, but somewhat loveless" term "German Jew".
  2. ↑ Schlomo Er'el: German Jews: The 'Jeckes' in Israeli humor .
  3. ↑ a b Greif: The Jeckes. 2006, p. 62.
  4. ↑ a b Edward Serotta: Jews, Germans, memory: a contemporary portrait. Nicolai, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-87584-608-7 , p. 33.
  5. ↑ The name in Latin letters was Hitachduth Olej Germania from 1932 to 1939 (as in the title of the Hitachduth Olej Germania bulletin ), from 1940 to 1942 Hitachduth Olej Germania we Austria (see Hitachdut bulletin Olej Germania we Austria ), then from 1943 until 2006 Irgun Olej Merkas Europa ( Hebrew אִרְגּוּן עוֹלֵי מֶרְכַּז אֵירוֹפָּה Irgūn ʿŌlej Merkaz Ejrōpah , German 'Organization of the Olim Central Europe' ; as in their organ: MB - weekly newspaper of Irgun Olej Merkas Europe ), since then the association has been called the Association of Israelis of Central European Origin ( Hebrew אִרְגּוּן יוֹצְאֵי מֶרְכַּז אֵירוֹפָּה Irgūn Jōtz'ej Merkaz Ejrōpah , German 'Organization of those from Central Europe' ; see. Title of its organ Yakinton / MB: Bulletin of the Association of Israelis of Central European Origin ).
  6. ↑ a b c d e Greif: The Jeckes. 2006, p. 61 f.
  7. ^ Jüdische Jitze, Salcia Landmann, DTV 1963
  8. ↑ Steven E. Aschheim: caftan and Cravat: The "Eastern Jew" as a cultural icon in the development of German anti-Semitism. In: Seymour Drescher, David Sabean, Allan Sharlin (Eds.): Political Symbolism in Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of George L. Mosse. Transaction Books, New Brunswick (NJ) 1982, ISBN 0-87855-422-X , pp. 81-99.
  9. ↑ Dov Sadan: Age Terakh: The Byways of Linguistic merger. In: Uriel Weinberg (Ed.): The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Folklore and Literature. Volume 1, New York 1954, pp. 134–142, p. 142. (= Publications of the Linguistic Circle of New York, 3)
  10. ↑ Evi Butzer: The beginnings of the Yiddish purim shpiln in their literary and cultural-historical context. Buske, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-87548-333-2 , p. 176, note 731. (= Yidische schtudies, 10)
  11. ↑ On Shiloni see Sophie Buchholz: Hans Herbert Hammerstein, Yisrael Shiloni. An educational biography. Master's thesis University of Potsdam, 2008. (PDF; 804 kB)
  12. ^ Foundation New Synagogue Berlin - Center Judaicum: Jeckes. The German-speaking Jews in Israel. Text for the exhibition from October 13th to December 30th, 2008.
  13. ↑ Quoted from Meir Faerber (ed.): On the way: An anthology of German-language literature in Israel. Bleicher, Gerlingen 1989, ISBN 3-88350-442-4 , p. 237.