![]() Due to this predicament there was an attempt at standardization in the 1920s, which was embraced by some, but as you can imagine, not by all. There is no nation to protect it, nor an organization to define it. The point here being Yiddish doesn’t have the infrastructure that most other languages have. You see, the Germans left behind German in Germany, and the Italians left behind Italian in Italy, and the Jews left behind Yiddish in… well, I suppose we just left it behind then, didn’t we? Perhaps I’m biased, but I think Yiddish is special. Now, you could say this is nothing particular to Yiddish, and that loads of immigrant families must have letters tucked away some place that are written in German, and Arabic, and Mandarin, and Italian, and French, and so on. Have an opinion about this opinion? Let us know what your view is. After her sons, Noah and Velvl, spent every last cent they had, she turned to her brother in Detroit, in the form of this letter, asking that he “not forget his dear older sister” and “save her from the brink of death.” Micro-histories such as these are casually tucked away, just as this one was, in attics and basements the country over, waiting to be translated in order for their story to be told. In her Russian-inflected Yiddish, she told of her harrowing journey from Horodok to Pinsk by parakhod (Russian: steamship) and from Pinsk to a sanitarium in Otwock. It was a letter dated June 14, 1939, which told the story of Breyndl, our protagonist, who was, nebekh, very sick. Recently, it was my pleasure to receive a relic of one such excavation. Others of us have dealt in the plain physical, schlepping boxes around, dusting off photo albums, having finally had a chance to dig through those unexamined family keepsakes that clutter the caverns of our homes. But beyond that, some of us have had more time than usual to contemplate the metaphysical, asking who we are and where we come from. As a translator of Yiddish, I’m always thinking of the past. Isolation is forced reflection, so it’s only natural if quarantine has us thinking of the past. We do not share data with third party vendors. Get Baltimore Jewish Times Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories
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