Conference for the Yiddish Language

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The Conference for the Jewish Language ( Yiddish קאָנפֿערענץ פֿאָר דער יודישער שפּראַך), also known as the Chernivtsi Conference (Yiddish טשערנאָוויצער קאָנפֿערענץ), took place from August 30 to September 3, 1908 in what was then the Austrian town of Chernivtsi . The aim of the international conference was to promote the Yiddish language and make it the Jewish national language .

Content and process

Hirsch David Nomberg , Chaim Schitlowsky , Schalom Asch , Itzhok Lejb Perez , Abraham Reisen during the Chernivtsi Conference (from right to left), widespread postcard

The organizer and driving force of the event was the Austrian publicist and former supporter of Zionism Nathan Birnbaum . He had prepared the conference during a trip to the USA, the organizing committee consisted of members of the Yiddish Club of the University of Vienna , which he founded . The agenda of the conference was broad and included a. the support of the Yiddish language in schools, press, theaters etc. and especially the demand for a uniform regulation of the Yiddish orthography . However, these concerns soon faded into the background and the question of the status of Yiddish as the “national language of the Jewish people” dominated the conference.

Around 40 out of a total of around 70 participants were delegates with voting rights, including Birnbaum himself and others. a. Chaim Zhitlovsky , Schalom Asch , Samuel Eisenstadt, Gerson Bader, Hirsch David Nomberg , Itzhok Lejb Perez , Esther Frumkin (for the General Jewish Workers' Union ), Abraham Reisen and Löbl Taubes. Mendele Moicher Sforim was unable to attend and sent a friendly greeting, as did Scholem Alejchem , who was ill. Delegates from Zionist organizations who favored Hebrew as the Jewish national language were overrepresented and the Bund, for which Yiddish was the only Jewish national language, underrepresented.

Birnbaum, whose mother tongue was German, gave the opening address in Yiddish, which he had only recently learned. The most diverse viewpoints on the status, function, and value of Yiddish and Hebrew collided suddenly. There was fierce argument over whether Yiddish was just a language or the national language of the Jewish people, as Frumkin argued. The conference reached a compromise and recognized Yiddish as “ a national language of the Jewish people” and called for its political, social and cultural equality with other languages; the importance of Hebrew was also mentioned. Birnbaum was elected Secretary General and was responsible for implementing the conference results and organizing a follow-up conference, which never took place. Later, after turning to strictly Orthodox Judaism , he judged his commitment to the conference negatively.

On March 4, 1910, the Zionist weekly Die Welt criticized the pear tree, which deviated from political Zionism, the Yiddish language and the Czernowitz Conference:

Participants in the conference for the Yiddish language

"... He [Mathias Acher, d. H. Birnbaum] went through a spiritual metamorphosis in several ways. ... His current theory of "Minimalgolus" [ Minimalgalut ] that Erstrebung cultural-autonomous Jewish centers in the Diaspora is, unlike his earlier views a weak, virtually impracticable and ideologically inconsistent [sic] compromise with the prevailing circumstances ... With the Golus accept now also the Golus language. While Hebrew was an unconditional main factor in the Jewish renaissance for him, he later inextricably linked his name to the “Czernowitz Conference”, which sinned grave and unforgivably against the national language of the Jewish people. In the opinion of its initiators, that conference should have "historical significance"; it may have it too, but only in the sense that it documented where the half-heartedness, inconsistency and flatness of Golus Jewry must lead. Certainly the jargon is spoken by millions. But from it to the proclamation of the same as the national language of the Jewish people is a very long way, as far as our gloomy reality of the full national rebirth of our people. "

The Chernivtsi Conference is generally considered to be the beginning of the academic discussion of the Yiddish language. a. 1925 to the founding of the YIVO (Yidischer wissnschaftlecher institut) and finally also to modern Yiddish studies .

literature

  • Gennady Estraikh: Speech Conference . In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 5: Pr-Sy. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-476-02505-0 , pp. 557-560.
  • Joshua A. Fishman : Attracting a Following to High-Culture Functions for a Language of Everyday Life: The Role of the Tshernovits Language Conference in the 'Rise of Yiddish.' In: International Journal of the Sociology of Language 24, 1980, pp. 43-73 (English).
  • Joshua A. Fishman: Ideology, Society and Language. The Oddyssey of Nathan Birnbaum. Karoma Publ., Ann Arbor 1987, ISBN 0897200829 (English).
  • Joshua A. Fishman: The Tshernovits Conference Revisited: The 'First World Conference for Yiddish' 85 Years Later. In: The Earliest Stage of Language Planning. Berlin 1993, pp. 321-331 (English).
  • Joshua A. Fishman: Chernivtsi Conference. In: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Edited by David Gershom Hundred. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-11903-9 , pp. 384 f. (English, also online ).
  • Emanuel S. Goldsmith: Modern Yiddish culture. The story of the Yiddish language movement. Fordham Univ. Press, New York 1976, reprint 2000, ISBN 0-8232-1695-0 (English).
  • Herbert J. Lerner: The Tshernovits Language Conference. A Milestone in Jewish Nationalist Thought. New York NY 1957 (Masters Essay. Columbia University) (English).

Web links

Commons : Conference for the Yiddish language  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Joshua A. Fishman: YIVO - Chernivtsi Conference. In: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe . July 30, 2008, accessed January 17, 2019 .
  2. ^ Dovid Katz : Words on Fire. The Unfinished Story of Yiddish . Basic Books, Cambridge MA 2007, ISBN 978-0-465-03730-8 , pp. 268f., Excerpts online ( Memento from June 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  3. ^ Die Welt, 1910, Issue 9 (March 4, 1910), page 192 Online access ( Memento from September 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ^ Dovid Katz: Words on Fire. The Unfinished Story of Yiddish . Basic Books, Cambridge MA 2007, p. 271.