The dialect of Yiddish made famous by authors such as “Sholem Aleichem” and the Yiddish theater of the early 20th century is dead and buried, both by the assimilation of American Jews and the holocaust. Modern Yiddish is a vibrant dialect, largely reflecting what had been the southeastern dialect of pre-holocaust Yiddish, and is only recently been beginning to produce significant literature (often in 21st century media that were unknown a century ago). Modern Yiddish is greatly enriched by American and Israeli vocabularly, and is probably as significant a change as occured in Yiddish from the early medieval period through the 20th century. Modern Yiddish is much more reflective of Jewish values than the dead dialect of the early 20th century (and a lot cleaner).
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