For Rakhmiel Peltz, a professor emeritus of sociolinguistics and founding director of Judaic studies at Drexel University, a realization led him to conclude that the switch he made within the world of higher education from science to sociolinguistics was a worthwhile one.
“I taught cell and molecular biology, and I have never seen students who were more enthusiastic than Yiddish students,” he said. “At all levels, too — the younger people, the Ph.D. students — the study of Yiddish transformed their lives, and especially their Jewish identity.”
Yiddish enthusiasts might not be large in number, but they make up for it in passion. For 28 years, Peltz and other Philadelphia Jews have gathered every year to renew their appreciation for the language, which was at one point spoken in the majority of American Ashkenazi homes, at the Haverford Yiddish Culture Festival. The 2024 edition returns next week on Dec. 8 with a silent film showing, accompanied by live music and a klezmer jam session.
Jeff Tecosky-Feldman is a professor of mathematics at Haverford College, as well as the faculty director of the Yiddish Cultural Festival. Tecosky-Feldman does not actually speak Yiddish; his interest was spurred after attending monthly Yiddish reading group meetings at the university. It harkened back to his youth and inspired him to dive deeper.
“My own interest in Yiddish is that I had a grandmother who spoke Yiddish, often to my parents when she didn’t want me to understand what she was saying. And I know this is a common occurrence among people my age; there was something very nostalgic to me about the language,” Tecosky-Feldman said. “Before I started helping to organize the programs, I learned a lot from them: that there’s a sort of incredible depth and breadth of interest in Yiddish literature, music and theater. So it’s been really enlightening to me, and I’ve been enjoying learning more and more about Yiddish and Eastern European culture as I become part of the programming.”
The festival is intended to both celebrate and preserve the language for older generations, as well as inform about and promote it with younger ones. Yiddish has become less ubiquitous with each passing generation and Tecosky-Feldman and Peltz’s experience with the language is emblematic of this trend.
Whereas Tecosky-Feldman heard Yiddish being spoken by older family members but never actually studied it until his adult life, Peltz learned it with nearly the same intensity he learned English.
“I went to Yiddish secular schools in the Bronx, which meant that I studied Yiddish from age seven, five days a week for an hour a day. I went to a high school that was a combination of a Zionist school and a general nonpolitical cultural school, and then I studied at a Yiddish teacher seminary,” he said.
Peltz remembers what it was like when being an American Ashkenazi Jew and speaking Yiddish went hand in hand. He said that the appeal of learning about the language is still there, even if not as many young people are leaping to take part.
“It’s about people; it’s not about [the] abstraction that [is] a language. I studied with people who had Yiddish at the heart of their being,” he said.
Peltz’s studies, which have led to numerous academic papers as well as a book, have taken him across the country. What he has seen reinforced his thoughts on what studying Yiddish is really about.
“I studied Yiddish [communities] in South Philadelphia, and I worked with Yiddish groups in small towns in New England, and I got the same feeling from both of them,” Peltz said.
This is why, he said, the festival is so important. It allows the attendee to learn about Yiddish culture and language from primary sources, not just academic papers or text books.
“Many Yiddish researchers just deal with texts and with literature,” he added.
Tecosky-Feldman said that those responsible for organizing the festival chose to show the 1924 movie The City Without Jews because its message is, unfortunately, applicable today.
The film tells the story of an ultraright nationalist party that rises to power in Austria and enacts antisemitic policies that exile all Jews, to the eventual detriment of the country. It was released during the rise of antisemitism in Europe that occurred in the wake of World War I.
“Frankly, the basic framework of the film is really quite relevant in today’s culture,” he said. “Aside from being a marvelous expressionist masterpiece of a film, we also have a live accompaniment written by acclaimed Klezmer musicians Donald Sosin and Alicia Svigals, and we’ve never done anything like that before so we’re very excited about it.”
The subsequent klezmer jam led by Svigals will be held at the Kaiserman JCC in Wynnewood and include time to both enjoy the music as well as learn if you want to begin your own klezmer journey.
The event begins at noon and is free to the public. No tickets, reservations or sign-ups are necessary. The showing will occur at Stokes Auditorium on Haverford’s campus. More information can be obtained by emailing Tecosky-Feldman at [email protected].
Ahead of the movie screening and jam, Peltz wants to reinforce one thing: Yes, this festival is important to preserving the history of the Yiddish language and culture, but no, the language is not in any danger of dying out.
“I’m not exactly sure [what the future holds for Yiddish], but we do know that it is not an endangered language, and that has to do with the number of Yiddish-speaking children there are,” he said. “We have that in largely Hasidic communities that exist in certain parts of Israel, Europe, Brooklyn, Upstate New York and elsewhere, with tens of thousands of Yiddish-speaking young children that will certainly continue the language for a century or two.”
