Is Yiddish Holy?

There was a question to the Debretziner Rav, Rav Moshe Stern ztzl are you allowed to take the newspaper The Forverts written with hebrew letters in yiddish to the bathroom? He answered the question is are you allowed to remove it?

don’t tell me what I’m going to say, as it is easy to prove you wrong again by not saying it.

No, I am showing you that your statement “nor are hats of any kind [holy]” is demonstrably false. Thus callign into question your expertise in analyzing Holiness and certainly calling into question your ability t olabel others “an ignoramus of unbelievable proportion who neither comprehends kedusha”

Some hats are in fact holy. That does not make all hats or even all such hats holy. I’m not quite sure how you came to that wrong conclusion

I’ve met quite a few Sephardim that have a better than casual knowledge of Yiddish.

Those of the old “yiddish theatre” clan would find it amusing… in fact would be joking about… Yiddish being “holy”. Those holocaust survivors (e.g. the Pruzhiner) were all firmly yiddish speakers many of whom were (forgive me) anything but ‘holy’.

I guess it all depends on your definition or perspective. After all, holy or not, what difference at this point, does it make?

Does anyone know what Rav Shach’s position was on Yiddish?

Singer said that the wives of all the Yiddish writers in Poland spoke to their families in Polish.

There is only one Loshon HaKodesh and that is …(drum roll)…Loshon Hakodesh!

Everything else is Loshon CHOL.

In Europe, many Catholic galachim wear “flache biber hitten” like many Hungariah (Satmar, Pope, Spink) wear. Also, don’t forget that today’s Chasidishe Shabbos L’vush was worn by Polish nobility.

I think you guys should stop harping about this, whether it’s true or not. At this point it’s irrelevant and no one confuses Chasidim with Polish nobility.

No they confuse them with Amish instead

Yes. The language that most of Klal Yisroel spoke in is holy. The Tzene Rena was written in Yiddish and is holy. The Imre Emes zt”l used to quote from there. Our babbes and Yiddishe mamas read it every Shabbos. The Mayona shel Torah was written in Yiddish.
Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l was at a meeting of a girls school discussing whether to learn Chumash in Yiddish and Rav Aharon was emphatic that they should. When asked by Board members if Yiddish has kedusha, he answered “Yiddish is not a Loshon kodesh but it is a Loshon of Kedoshim (the previous generations) and we must continue the kesher to those generations “.

AviK: you sound like a broken tape recorder.

It’s about time you let it go. How about you use your Free Market economic theories here?

It’s about time you let it go. How about you use your Free Market economic theories here?

If you are going to use free market economies, then Yiddish loses. More jews speak English or Hebrew than Yiddish and before you even bring up Frie jews, Sephardim have a say in the matter and they speak english or Hebrew today.

I have also heard stories that my Alter Bubbies and Zadies spoke either Ukranian or Polish (The ones who told me the story just called it Goyish and I dont think they knew which one it was)

“It is long past time that it was relegated to anthropologists.”

People have been saying that for centuries.
Yiddish has outlasted them all, and will outlast you too.
sorry if you find this disappointing

I never said yiddish is dying. I am well aware where it is spoken. However I do frequent Lakewood and am actually there quite often. People there do not usually speak it. I know its spoken in Chassidic Communities.

The only time Ive ever heard Yiddish spoken in lakewood is when the R’Y is around

Mammele,
1. Tape recorder? You really are living in the past.
2. On the contrary, the niche is getting smaller. I once saw a Russian immigrant try to speak it with a Chareidi. The latter could barely get along and was clearly uncomfortable.

The Mishna Brura declared Yiddish a lashon chol. Psak. End of discussion.

Yiddish is holy to us who are fortunate to understand or speak this beautiful shprach of the g’dolim. It is torturous for those of you who don’t.
zahavasdad, in all likelihood, your Zadie did not converse in Polish.

It wasnt my Zadie, It was an Alter Zadie whom I never met. My grandmother told me they used to speak “Goyish” so they wouldnt understand. She just didnt know what Goyish was. They were from what is today Ukraine, but was Poland after World War 1 , so its really hard to know if it was Polish or Ukranian (Jews did speak those languages)

LerntminTayrah,

I believe what you are saying. Is there a Mareh mokom to this that you earlier stated?

could it make sense that its not kadosh but, on the other hand its a language that Jews used, to separate themselves from the non-jews when speaking regularly so as not to use lashon hakodesh for mundane purposes

Even though there are non-jews that speak it they learnt it from us just like some of them off to speak lashon hakodesh

On a side note anyone know the history of yiddish?

Heads up I didnt look past this page to know how many times ppl posted 🙂 or what they posted so if its a repeat sorry

Lashon haKodesh was the spoken language of Am Yisrael until the churban Bayit Rishon. In fact, only the aristocracy even understood Aramaic (Yeshayahu 36:11). Of course, one’s everyday language should also be kadosh. In general our job is to make the chol kadosh. This is central to Rav Kook’s view of the difference between the Torah of Eretz Yisrael and the torah of galut.

As for Yiddish being a means of separation from the others, in fact, it is a creole German. Speaking Yiddish in Switzerland, where they are mutually intelligible (I have this on the authority of the wife of a friend who is from Switzerland and was demonstrated in “Pastry, Pain and Politics'”) and even in Czechoslovakia and Poland, where german was widely spoken, simply does not achieve this.

Avi
why is “mutually intelligible” a contradiction to “separation “?
And as you may know, some geographers are saying that Europe is bigger than Switzerland, so even if Yiddish is “mutually intelligible” in Switzerland. It obviously isnt (and wasn’t) in the rest of Europe including Czechoslovakia and Poland.
I dont want to argue with the authority of your esteemed friend’s wife., and I havent spoke to many Swiss,, so it is possible that in some areas of Switzerland they do speek a more “yidishized” German, but I have spoken to several Germans and while they marveled and the similarity of some words they did not understand yiddish, and the too are not “mutually intelligible”

Avi K: even “holy”(!) Ivrit nowadays is a hodge-podge tongue. containing a significant number of words taken from English, Russian, and Arabic, among others. You are surely familiar with the infamous “back-axle kidmit” For the uninitiated, this IS a phrase used today in Israel that refers to a vehicles’ front wheel axle….
All languages today are “creole,” including English and Ivrit.

My source is mishna brura 307.5 which says to say shabbas shalom, “or as we say in mundane language” (ie yiddish, the language he spoke) Shabsa Tava (“gut shabbes”)

So he spoke yidisha and called it a lashon chol. Others referred to it as lashon ashkenaz, the Germanic tongue. Teitch literally means deitch, the Germanic language.

Avi
“the Germans say the same things about Swiss German”
Of course they would. I’m not sure what you are trying to say.