Reply To: Is Yiddish Holy?

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WinnieThePooh
Participant

As pointed out above, the argument that Yiddish is holy because it was the language used to learn Torah is flawed because there are many languages used to learn Torah, and no one is going to claim that they are holy.
I have a different take, inspired by ChabadShlucha’s thread on holiness:
If we define kodesh as something set aside, separate, then one can argue that Yiddish is Kadosh because it separated the Jewish people from others- although similar to German, it was the language of the Jews, it made them distinct from their non-Jewish neighbors for many years, and also bonded Jews from different regions- at least those hailing from European countries. Same with Ladino in its time. (My father once taught Russian immigrants recently arrived in the US in the 1990s. He was able to communicate with them by speaking Yiddish with some of the old timers, who then translated to the younger ones). One can also argue that as Yiddish loses this function, it loses its status as Kadosh.