Reply To: Yiddish at Siyum hashas

Any decent speaker must understand his crowd. BMG is not met life stadium.

Rav Pam was quite fluent in Yiddish and perhaps even more so than English (I was not zoche to spend time with him) . I do know that when he spoke at a Torah Umesorah conference where the overwhelming majority were Orthodox teachers and principals he addressed every single person in the room. Not only did he speak in English but if he said a Hebrew or Yiddish word or phrase he would translate it. Up the word “menorah” which he figured the attendees knew what a menorah was. Everything else was translated. In my mind, that is gadlus. Taking into account the people in your audience.

If there is a gathering for the siyum hashas in Israel I would not expect the speeches to be in English. However if they do make the speeches in Yiddish instead of Hebrew they will be sending a message of “if you are not chareidi, go home. You are not welcome here..”